“From the Depths of the Beast arises a chance for freedom from within. After ten and half years in solitary confinement, I have finally regained a chance at staying in general population. It is a greater freedom than I have had in over the past decade of my life, and a much more preferable living area while waiting and working toward a chance at release from prison to a second chance in life.”

This is the first piece in a series of art and written work by men incarcerated in Unit 29, the destination for those considered the worst of the worst at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. The Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to teach state inmates writing skills, released the book in November.

“Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison” can also be a teaching moment for readers.

“In a sense, I wanted to record human suffering as it unfolds,” Louis Bourgeois, the organization’s executive director, wrote in an email.

“Extreme situations result in extreme reactions. But I’ll let the reader decide for themselves if the book is successful in rendering the accuracy of what goes on there, right under society’s nose.”

The essays, as in this first one by Anthony Wilson, do not gloss over what landed the writers in the most infamous unit of the state’s most infamous prison. In Wilson’s case, it was escaping from a community work center with a fellow inmate, then assaulting and robbing an older woman, leading to her death. As he writes in “From the Depths of the Beast”:

"Not a day goes by I don’t wish I could rewind the hands of time for the two of us and bring back life. Hers and mine together. Though her life was at its end, mine was only in the beginning and it ended before you really got started. I pray for her and pray the lord both forgives me for the stupid choices me and a brother made that day.

"If a day comes, I regain my freedom more than the freedom on the inside, I’ll (sic) shall cherish it the rest of my days. Until then, I’ll take pride in my progress on the inside and make the best of the freedom I have inside these walls."

Unit 29 houses about 700 people and the average age of the men there is 38, according to records from the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Some, like Wilson, were incarcerated as teens or young men and remain there for long sentences. The youngest men there are 18 and the oldest are 78. As of November, the average sentence in Unit 29 is 25 years, according to MDOC records.

Bourgeois has taught writing workshops to incarcerated people for over 20 years, starting at the Marshall County Correctional Facility in Holly Springs where he took over the program for former University of Mississippi professor Gabriel Gudding.

By 2010, Bourgeois co-founded VOX PRESS, a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to publish marginalized writers. That organization has published two volumes of writings by “In Our Own Words: Writing From Parchman Prison” in 2014, “Unit 30: New Writings from Parchman Farm” in 2016 and “Mississippi Prison Writing” in 2021, which includes work by women incarcerated at the Mississippi Correctional Institute for Women at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl.

The new book includes the work of over 30 incarcerated writers over a three-year period.

Bourgeois said most of the writers had never written anything before, but they created what he called “a masterpiece of prison realism” about undergoing the harrowing experience of staying alive in a Mississippi prison such as the infamous Parchman.

“The method to put this off was simple but potent: It doesn’t have to be good; it just has to be brutally honest,” he wrote.

Unit 29 also houses death row, where 34 men live in mostly solitary confinement, awaiting responses to their appeals as they inch closer to execution by lethal injection, or another method such as gas, electric chair or firing squad if the lethal drugs are not available.

Among those at Unit 29 is Steven Wilbanks, convicted for the 2013 murder of Zacharias McClendon. Wilbanks, then a student at the University of Mississippi, fatally shot McClendon, a first year Ole Miss graduate student, with the intent of stealing his money and credit cards.

A jury sentenced him to death, but he won a new trial on appeal. He requested a bench trial to spare his family and the victim’s family a replay. From his essay “Scars”:

“A scar is an interesting thing. Some look cool. Some look ugly. But the scars that affect us the most can’t even be seen. They cut deep, down to the bone, and often break our hearts. Indeed: sticks and stones can break our bones, but words can hurt forever. And the pen is mightier than the sword.

"My deepest psychological scar occurred February 15, 2018, when a jury of my peers sentenced me to Death by Lethal Injection. ‘Don’t worry,’ my attorney said. ‘It’ll be quick and painless.’”

Wilbanks writes that he believed pleading guilty would take him off death row. Instead he was resentenced to life without the possibility of parole, which means he will die in prison.

"Despite it being the second worse day of my life, something positive did come out of it for which I will forever be grateful: I was finally allowed to apologize to the victim’s family, which I did, from the bottom of my heart….

“The best thing I can think to do with all of these scars—psychological and physical—is to learn to live with them; embrace them; accept them for what they are: Proof that I am human.”

At the end of December 2020, riots broke out in Units 29 and 30 at Parchman, prompting the Mississippi Highway Patrol and multiple sheriff’s deputies to be called. Cellphone video from the inside showed fights and fires. By the time law enforcement quelled the violence, at least five prisoners were dead at Parchman and other correctional facilities.

Pictures and footage have also emerged of run- down living areas cited in a 2022 Justice Department report finding that conditions at Parchman violate the Constitution.

Gov. Tate Reeves vowed in his first State of the State address to shut Unit 29 down, but to date it has remained open, with plans by Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain to make renovations and bring closed parts back online.

“A hostile environment filled with as many broken and lonely, lost people just trying to maintain a purpose. Underachievers and complete failures in life. Imagine urine, fan motors, random fires, floods, arguments, childish behavior, and sometimes aggressive behavior from people who don’t even know. Never-ending, floods, and smoke keeps things interesting—never a dull moment”

That’s how Derrick Willis describes conditions in his essay, “G-Building Reflections.” He is serving life for capital murder and armed robbery and is in long-term segregation.

"Some people wash clothes in the toilet. Don’t be gross; use the sink. Long-term segregation doesn’t have visitation, unless arranged, so a lot of people go a long time without seeing their family. No calls are cheap, though.

“Locked down 24/7 for days and weeks. Showers are done three times a week. Yard call happens once every week. There’s no air in the summer, the heat is unimaginable. Concrete and steel draws in the cold so the heat just keeps the air moderate during winter”

This past summer, temperatures soared above 100 degrees in the flat Delta as people incarcerated at Unit 29 sat in a concrete building, a material that can absorb heat. Humidity only amplifies the temperature.

Fans placed throughout a unit push hot air around. Those can sit directly in front of or under a fan purchased from the prison commissary. Air conditioning has come to a majority of Parchman – but not Unit 29 – as well as at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility hundreds of miles away. There is not a set timeline to bring AC to the rest of the prison system.

The heat only adds to an oppressive atmosphere, which worsens for those dealing with mental illness. Two in five people who are incarcerated have a history of mental illness, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Commissioner Cain has recognized that many in the prison system struggle with illnesses and addiction.

Between 2015 and 2024, at least 50 people incarcerated in Mississippi prisons died from suicide, according to records from the State Medical Examiner’s Office.

Victor Perryman was serving 30 years as a habitual offender for slashing the throat of a Hinds County deputy and taking her vehicle. He died in June 2023 from natural causes, according to records of in-custody deaths provided to Mississippi Today by the State Medical Examiner’s Office.

In his poem “4 Walls,” he wrote:

"As I stare at these 4 walls

Feeling sad depressed and lonely

The only thing that keeps me

Half way focused is my homies

My psych doctor comes by she

Put me to the test

Give me psychotics

To help me rest

These 4 walls is the real test

I’ve seen my revelations that

Suicide is probably the best"

Bourgeois said some of the authors remain at Unit 29, while some have been moved to other prisons including East Mississippi Correctional Facility, South Mississippi Correctional Institute and Walnut Grove Correctional Facility. He said others have been released or have died.

“I am still in touch with several of them in the prison and outside of it, in which we will publish their individual efforts over the course of the next few years,” he said. “The whole premise of VOX Press is to allow the unheard to have a voice, and that is being played out now (in) a most meaningful way.”

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This story was originally published by Mississippi Today and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.