A screenshot of the state Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Jan. 11 for the departments of Public Safety and Corrections.
Regional Editor
A screenshot of the state Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Jan. 11 for the departments of Public Safety and Corrections.
(The Center Square) — The Mississippi Department of Public Safety and the Department of Corrections are asking the Legislature for more money in the upcoming fiscal year.
The Senate Appropriations Committee held a hearing Tuesday and heard from the directors of the public safety and corrections departments, each outlining respective budget requests for fiscal 2024, which begins on July 1.
The Department of Corrections has asked the Legislature for a $28.336 million deficit appropriation for the remainder of the fiscal year to cover additional off-site medical costs for prisoners and add 182 additional positions to get the department compliant with U.S. Department of Justice requirements on prisoner health care.
The DOJ has been investigating the Mississippi DOC since February 2020 and cited the department for issues with prisoner safety at the state’s largest prison, Parchman, in April.
The department wants an increase of $44 million from $347 million in 2023 to $391 million for 2024.
DOC Commissioner Burl Cain said the increase would be used for anti-recidivism programs (job training, GED classes and other post-release initiatives), facility improvements and hiring. He said his department’s new pay scale of $19.35 per hour wage for starting corrections officers means they will canvass the state on a hiring blitz.
Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell told the committee that his agency wants a new trooper school that would help the state get closer to the 600 state trooper level that the agency is authorized under law.
His department has requested a $28 million increase from the $276 million outlayed in 2023. The increase would be used to fund the trooper school, hires for the new cyber security division, salary increases, and capital improvements at trooper stations statewide.
Two crime lab forensic scientists leaving the department for higher-paying jobs in the private sector also testified to the need for the state to increase the salaries in those positions.
Tindell said the state went nearly eight years in the last decade without a trooper school, which has led to a spate of retirements among the troopers and a lopsided roster with lots of young troopers and older troopers.
Appropriations committee hearings in both the House and Senate are one step in the budget process for Mississippi, which began with hearings in November before the joint budget committee. Lawmakers will craft separate appropriations bills as one of their last tasks before leaving the capitol in April.
Regional Editor
Steve Wilson has been an award-winning writer and editor for nearly 20 years at newspapers in Georgia, Florida and Mississippi and is a U.S. Coast Guard veteran and University of Alabama graduate.
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