A Private Prison Billed Mississippi for Guards Who Weren't There

On March 5, 2026, the Mississippi Office of the State Auditor sent Management & Training Corporation (MTC) three civil demand letters⧉ totaling $7,423,567.30 -- $6,002,027.92 for the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, $959,240.06 for Marshall County, and $462,299.32 for East Mississippi⧉ -- for what the state calls improper staffing credits: MTC billing the Mississippi Department of Corrections as though its contracted minimum staffing levels were met, at prisons where they weren't. MTC didn't pay within the state's statutory 30-day window, so the case went to the Attorney General's Office for enforcement⧉.

This is not a new pattern.▸ A 2020 investigation by The Marshall Project⧉, reported with Mississippi Today, first documented it in named incidents: at Marshall County -- whose contract required at least 19 officers on the overnight shift -- officer Darrell Adams was beaten unconscious on April 3, 2019 after he was left as the sole guard working his unit, also covering for six absent officers in three other buildings; at Wilkinson, new guard Markus Chatman was stabbed weeks into the job, during a day shift with roughly 12 officers on duty against a 43-officer contract minimum.

The Auditor's office followed up with its first civil demand in November 2022⧉ -- $1,991,774.10, covering only Marshall County and roughly 12,000 unfilled mandatory shifts from 2017 to 2020.▸ MTC tendered $5.125 million to the state in September 2023⧉ as that investigation closed out. Under state statute, White's latest demand letters -- issued March 5, 2026 -- went to the Attorney General's Office after MTC missed the 30-day payment window⧉, the same mechanism that ended each of MTC's prior citations. This round is the largest yet, and the first to cover all three of MTC's Mississippi prisons at once.

Wilkinson County carries the overwhelming majority of the new demand, and The Marshall Project's reporting explains why the pattern ran so long there⧉: the contract required a minimum of 30 officers on the overnight shift, but officers told reporters it was common for five or six guards to run the entire high-security prison overnight.▸ MTC's own 2018 internal audit found Wilkinson 'routinely failed to fill two or three mandatory positions every shift,' and the facility's then-warden admitted he had ceded control of parts of the prison to gangs. Mississippi paid MTC $87 million to run Wilkinson between 2013 and 2019, and MTC invoices show the company refunded nothing to the state for the vacant positions documented across those six years -- the gap this March's $6 million demand is now trying to close after the fact.

MTC has not denied that staffing fell short of contract minimums.▸ The company told WLBT it had already voluntarily paid $5.9 million relating to these staffing issues⧉ and separately offered $4.5 million to settle the new demand -- an offer the Auditor's office says it never received before the deadline passed. Auditor Shad White called the case 'one of the largest civil demands made in the history of the Auditor's Office'⧉ and said the company's size doesn't change the math: 'I don't care how big of an out-of-state company you are or how many campaign donations you make to the other politicians, if you owe taxpayers money because you failed to live up to a contract with government, we will demand you pay it back.' With the case now at the Attorney General's Office, whether MTC pays $7.4 million, $4.5 million, or some court-set figure in between is an open question with no filed date for an answer.