According to data from the Mississippi Department of Corrections, 4,202 people were held in prison for 60 days or more during the past four fiscal years. This was despite the fact that the parole board had said they could be released. Around 1,500 people were locked up for 90 days or more, which is at least three months. Many of these cases see people remain behind their release dates because they don’t have addresses to which the department can release them, Steve Pickett, Chairman Mississippi Parole Board, said in an interview. Pickett said that the data shows a need to provide transitional housing for those who have been released from prison. Pickett stated that without an approved address they are not released. Pickett stated that they have no place to go so they are kept in penitentiary while an address is found or a halfway house is provided. The report was presented by the Corrections and Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary B and Senate Corrections committees. The report’s authors recommend that funding for transitional housing be specifically appropriated under a MDOC line item. Also, the task force recommended that the Parole Board be given statutory authority to place homeless prisoners in transitional housing. Research has shown that people who have been in prison for more than a decade are 10 times more likely to become homeless than the general population. Experts say that people who have been released from prison face obstacles to housing access. These include landlords refusing to rent to them, and restrictions on public housing and vouchers. The state law requires that the corrections department contract at least 100 transitional reentry centers beds, in which parolees can be placed without housing. The corrections department stated that it made community work center beds available for people who were released from prison without an address. MDOC announced in May 2019 that it would increase the number of transitional beds to 310. According to Transparency Mississippi, the department has five contracts with different organizations in Jackson, Madison, Madison, and Meridian for transitional housing. Andre de Gruy, State Public Defender, suggested that a separate housing authority could manage transitional housing. Juan Barnett (D-Heidelberg), who chairs the Senate Corrections Committee said that expanding transitional beds would save the state money. MDOC pays contractors $20 per day for a bed. The state, however, spends twice as much to keep someone in state facilities. Pickett stated that approximately 500 people need a transitional bed on any given day. 500 beds would be less than $3.7million a year. He also said that smaller re-entry centres are more effective than concentrated housing because of Mississippi’s rural environment. Pickett stated, “If you take someone from Tupelo and bring them to Jackson and put them in a halfwayhouse, it’s going be difficult to succeed.”