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Wyoming Stops Sending Prisoners to Mississippi After Staffing Improves
In 2023, the Wyoming Department of Corrections (DOC) sent dozens of state prisoners to the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility (“Tallahatchie”) in Tutwiler, Mississippi due to understaffing. At the time, roughly 25% of the DOC’s uniformed staff positions were vacant, largely due to low pay and an inability to attract qualified candidates. Now, after the state legislature approved a salary raise for public employees, including prison guards, staffing levels have improved enough that the DOC, in early September 2026, announced that 240 prisoners are being brought back to the state.
Some of the returned prisoners were shipped in 2018 from Wyoming to the Tallahatchie lockup, which is owned by private prison profiteer CoreCivic, as PLN previously reported. [See: PLN, Dec. 2018, p.42.] Back then, the DOC paid $52,500 to send the prisoners on a 1,300-mile, 32-hour bus ride to Tutwiler. Part of the decision had to do with cost, as the DOC claimed it saved $60 per prisoner, per day by sending them to a facility operated by CoreCivic, a company with a long track record of mismanagement, understaffing and custodial deaths.
While current staffing levels prompted the prisoners’ return, the DOC remains open to reviving the policy if deemed necessary. “Given the unpredictability of future court commitments alongside existing staff vacancy rates, long-term operational needs remain subject to change,” DOC Director Dan Shannon wrote in an email to WyoFile.
Source: WyoFile
