Mississippi: Wide search for new leader of troubled prisons

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS
Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi is looking nationwide for a new prisons director.

The state’s prisons are reckoning with a recent outburst of violence that left five inmates dead and others injured, along with longstanding problems with vacant jobs and damaged facilities.

Incoming Republican Gov. Tate Reeves is holding a news conference Thursday to announce the group that will search for a new corrections commissioner.

The effort will be led by Vicksburg Mayor George Flaggs, a former state lawmaker.

Reeves was a top budget writer for years as former commissioners pleaded for money to fix dangerously low salaries and prison conditions.