Only two officers were responsible for guarding dorms that housed more than 250 men. They were brutally beaten by a prisoner who charged them after each shift. White arrived just in time to spray him with pepper spray. He threw her to the ground. White claims that the next few seconds replayed thousands upon thousands of times in her head: The man on top, smashing her jaw with his eyes, and rage. She felt a popping sensation in her knee. According to an incident report, it took nine minutes for help to reach her. White fled Parchman after the 2016 attack and hid in her home, far from family, friends, and church. While she was recovering from her knee injury she used a wheelchair and became so obsessed with suicidal or homicidal thoughts she had to check herself into a mental institution. She says, “I don’t trust anyone anymore.” “Everybody is an enemy to me.” The violence against and among Mississippi prisoners has been a national scandal. At least 18 prisoners have been killed since Christmas. The U.S. Department of Justice announced this month that it would investigate conditions in four of six state-owned large prisons. The Marshall Project also found that violence against guards is a major problem in the Mississippi system. We analyzed hundreds of pages of court documents and state records, as well as interviews with over 30 prisoners, to discover a dangerous environment behind bars. According to our analysis, prisoners attacked guards an average of 340 times per year since 2016. There were an average 1,300 guards working each year. According to interviews and state records, they were often beaten, stabbed, and sexually assaulted. According to state records and interviews, 115 of these assaults result in serious injuries each year. Officers, inmates, and experts all agree on the main cause of violence: Mississippi prisons have so few staff that no one is safe. The threat to remaining officers increases as more staff leaves, making it difficult to keep and hire workers. Guards claim that many of their colleagues aren’t showing up to work every day. Therefore, it is common for one officer to manage 200 people in cells and dorms. Too many vacant positions Half of Mississippi’s correctional-officer jobs are unfilled. According to a Marshall Project survey, Alabama has the highest vacancy rate at 58 percent. Twelve states had vacancies exceeding 20 percent, according to the Marshall Project survey. In recent years, violence has broken out in prisons with insufficient staffing in Alabama, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Five prison guards were killed in North Carolina in 2017. A federal report stated that understaffing, one in four positions being vacant, opened the doors to violence. All across the country, corrections officials agree that guard shortages are a major problem. However, lawmakers in many states are reluctant to reduce the number of officers or raise their salaries. This is especially true in Mississippi where guards start at $25,650. The starting salary for officers in privately-run prisons in the state is $23,400. Others states, particularly those that have corrections-officer associations, pay higher salaries. Massachusetts’s average is $58,680. According to federal data, the national average for prison guards and jailers was $49,300 in 2018. This number was $30,840 in Mississippi. Bryan Stirling, South Carolina’s corrections director, says that legislators are acting as if they’re shocked by what happened in their prison. “They just stick their heads in the sand hoping the problem will go away.” Mississippi corrections officials have not responded to multiple requests for comment. Sometimes corrections officers are criticized for their indifference and excessive violence towards the human rights of those they serve. Many guards claim they do their best to be safe in a low-paying, low-status job at a dangerous place. They also know that prison guards can be attacked out of despair by people in jail. Leslie Jones is a former corrections officer who is thick-set and stout-spoken. He claims that he fought with prisoners multiple times per week during his three-year tenure at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, which is located on the Louisiana border. Management & Training Corporation operates one of the three Mississippi prisons. Jones claims he was unable to get mad at the man who knocked Jones out and ripped his eyebrows and lips in 2017. The attacker had been threatened by gangs and he was determined to flee his unit. Jones said Jones that Jones was putting his life in danger. Jones says that the fastest way to get out of a zone is to attack an officer. Jones’ anger is saved for MTC, Jones claims. MTC runs a prison that puts everyone at risk. Jones claims that Wilkinson was manned by seven guards at its worst when it needed 28. Jones claims that the physical conditions in prison are very bad and that assaulting officers is not punished. Jones states, “Your life isn’t worth two ramen noodles packs, and MTC could end it.” In 2018, he left Wilkinson. MTC, a Utah-based company, did not respond to Jones’s allegations nor to questions regarding attacks at the prison. Issa Arnita, a spokesman for Utah-based MTC, stated that the company is committed to improving safety at its facilities. “Our brave correctional personnel work in an environment with inherent risk, so we do everything possible to minimize those risks.” The state received monthly reports showing that Wilkinson prison guards suffered the most assaults and injuries in 36 months ending in mid-2018. The state lawyer described the reports as internal documents that had not been “verified and/or corrected for accuracy.” Guards are needed to patrol the prison floor, oversee the units, handle fights and assist when another officer is in danger. In prison, men and women cannot take showers, visit their families, receive medical care or exercise without enough staff. According to an audit, Wilkinson’s men missed 70 percent of their scheduled medical visits in 2018. According to the audit, video surveillance revealed that men were locked up in their cells while staff reported them exercising or bathing. Arnita states that MTC has retrained staff members and established new procedures to ensure that inmates go to their medical appointments. Gangs take control in Mississippi Prisons. According to court filings and interviews with staff, some officers are involved in gang-related activities, including providing contraband and preferential treatments, which contributes towards the violence. According to some officers interviewed, a smuggled phone can earn a guard as much as a week’s salary. Corrections officers can escape violence but prisoners cannot. The turnover is high and the number of guards in the six state-owned large prisons has dropped by a third from 1,616 last year to 1,060. Publicly run prisons suffered the greatest losses. The number of attacks fell as the staff decreased. The population of large prisons increased by 4 percent to over 13,000 during the same time. The number of people in large prisons increased by 4 percent to more than 13,000 over the same period. As more officers leave, those who remain must protect more people. Southern Mississippi Correctional Institution in Leakesville, Alabama, has been the worst victim. It is the location of the first murder in the current spate of violence. According to state records, it had one officer per 20 prisoners in 2019, compared with one per 12 in 2016. Prison managers resort to “lockdowns” when there aren’t enough officers. They keep prisoners in dorms or cells almost 24 hours per day, sometimes for several months. Constant caging can lead to violence by creating a pressure cooker. Staffers claim that the electronic locking systems at Parchman or Wilkinson collapsed in the mid-2010s. This allowed prisoners to access their cells and launch attacks. Colton Smith was one of those prisoners. He was excited when he started at Wilkinson in 2014. He could work overtime and earned $9.50 an hour. Smith had watched his father become a successful prison officer and wanted to do the same. On his first day at work, Smith recalls telling the warden “I’m gunning to get your job.” Smith claims that Smith fell asleep during an overnight shift in the long term solitary unit after a few months. One of the prisoner’s cell locks was open, and the prisoner attacked Smith with his own pepper spray. He also stabbed him twice using a prison-made knife. Smith claims that the attacks continued. A third man diduse Smith with boiling water. To beat Smith unconscious, a third man slipped from his handcuffs. Smith claims that he started imagining the same attacks in dreams after a fourth prisoner had sliced him ten more times with a shank. He was prescribed medication to treat anxiety and depression. Guards are prone to stress like Smith’s. According to government studies and research papers, correctional officers are at high risk for PTSD, depression, and alcoholism. Smith was emotional as he spoke out about his feelings of being sullen and irritable, while also neglecting his son and wife. Smith says that the anger and hatred instils itself in him. Smith said, “I nearly lost my family.” He quit his job in 2018 after he was promoted to sergeant, which paid $13 per hour. Smith now works as a housekeeper in a hospital, earning $8 an hour. He also attends nursing school. Smith’s attacks were not addressed by MTC. Officials in prison went back to traditional locks, which created its own problems. A prisoner stole keys from Wilkinson’s female prison officer who was working alone in long-term isolation, the most dangerous prison unit. According to an MTC incident record, he unlocked three of his friends and opened Jerome Harris’ cell. They then stabbed him in his head, chest, and back. According to a MTC settlement lawsuit, Harris lost his left eye as well as almost all of his vision in his right during the attack in 2018. The loss of a livelihood is what Dashing is all about. Bryan Gaston, who is 6’9 and 300 lbs and a Navy veteran, has 16 years of experience as a correctional officer in Oklahoma and Colorado. According to Gaston, he was the only person who threw liquid at him before he arrived in Wilkinson prison in 2017. At Wilkinson? He says, “Countless.” He says that the worst feeling a person could have in their entire lives is for them to have their human waste drip off of them. Gaston was left with a recurring infection from the dashings that has blurred his vision in one of his eyes. Gaston, a lifelong hunter, can’t pass the marksmanship exams he used to be able to. Gaston claims that his doctor ordered two yearly HIV and hepatitis tests. He is now a prisoner in a neighboring state. The Marshall Project interviewed 33 Mississippi prison workers. Only seven of them said they were disappointed. Even guards who claim they are committed to their jobs and provide care for prisoners inside, ended up feeling disillusioned, depressed, and even suicidal in this environment. White, a former Parchman lieutenant who sought mental health care, was one of those people. She advocates counseling for both staff and prisoners today: “They’re not getting that kind of help to straighten out their minds.” She claims she has forgiven her attacker, and prays every day that God will soften the heart and mind of the man she used to want to kill. She also feels a deep sense of loss. She says, “He took my life.” “He took my life.”