Minimum, medium, and close custody; protective and restrictive housing; death row (men) · State Prison · MDOC

Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman)

Parchman, Sunflower County, Mississippi

Visiting schedules change without notice. Always call before traveling.

Call Visiting Office: (662) 745-6611 Info last verified: June 2026

Mississippi's oldest prison — an 18,000-acre Delta prison farm at Parchman holding higher-custody men and the state's death row, remote in the Delta and the subject of 2022 federal findings.

Statewide rules that apply at every MDOC state prison

These rules are set by MDOC and apply at every unit. The full list — including all permitted and prohibited items and the approval process — is in Visiting in Mississippi.

Dress code

Shirts and closed outdoor shoes required; underwear required (a bra for women). No tank, crop, sleeveless, or strapless tops, spaghetti straps, or bare midriffs.
Nothing see-through, overly tight, or revealing — no yoga pants, leggings, spandex, hip-huggers, jogging or biking shorts, mini-skirts, or cutoffs.
Shorts must reach the knee; skirts and dresses no shorter than one inch above the knee, with no slit above the knee when seated.
No hats or head coverings except for religious reasons; jewelry limited to a wedding ring, a religious medallion, and a medical-alert bracelet — no body-piercing jewelry.
The dress code applies to children too, and a violation turns the visit away and can carry a one-year visiting suspension.

ID: Visitors 18 and older present a valid government photo ID (driver's license, state ID, or passport). Ages 16-17 need a photo ID showing date of birth; children 15 and under bring a legible birth certificate.
What to bring: No phones, wallets, purses, tobacco, or cash inside — leave them locked in the vehicle. Visits are cashless, with prepaid vending cards sold in the visit area; one infant diaper bag is allowed (up to 4 diapers, 2 bottles, a change of clothes, a pacifier, and wipes).
Scheduling: The incarcerated person starts the visitor application — forms come only from them, never online — lists up to 10 visitors, and tells visitors the days and rules. Up to 5 visitors per visit; frequency runs by custody level (about four times a month at minimum custody down to once a month at close custody). MDOC posts no schedules, so confirm days and hours with the facility.

Full statewide rules: Visiting in Mississippi

Overview

Mississippi State Penitentiary — universally known as Parchman — is the state’s oldest prison, opened in 1901 on land the state bought as a cotton plantation the year before. It grew into an 18,000-acre prison farm spread across the Delta, and it still runs agricultural and prison-industry operations today. It holds men in minimum, medium, and close custody, but its defining role is higher security: it houses the system’s male protective-custody, close-custody, and restrictive-housing populations, along with death row, which moved to the renovated Unit 17 in October 2025. The Unit 42 hospital on the grounds provides round-the-clock medical care, and Parchman is the reception and classification center for men sentenced from northern Mississippi counties — a roughly two-week-to-45-day intake during which no visits are allowed.

What Makes Parchman Different

It is one of the most remote prisons in the state. There is no public transit to the facility. The nearest towns with services — Cleveland and Indianola — are 15 to 20 miles away, and the nearest cities are Memphis (about two hours north) and Jackson (about three hours south).
Death row and the execution chamber are here, in Unit 17. Mississippi’s one woman under a death sentence is held separately at the women’s facility in Pearl, not at Parchman.
It is a men’s intake point. Men sentenced from the northern part of the state are received and classified here before placement, and visiting cannot begin until classification is complete.
Federal findings cover this facility (see below) — useful context for families navigating conditions, medical care, and safety concerns.

Conditions and Federal Oversight

In April 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division issued findings, after an investigation under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, that conditions at Parchman violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The findings identified four problems: a failure to protect people from violence, inadequate mental-health care, inadequate suicide prevention, and prolonged isolation in restrictive housing. The department tied these to severe staffing shortages. The report is linked in the sources below; families raising a medical or safety concern can use the channels in Medical & Mental Health.

Visiting

The statewide MDOC rules above — the inmate-initiated application, the dress code, ID, and screening — apply at Parchman. What is not published is a schedule: MDOC posts no visiting days or hours for the facility, and how often a person can visit depends on their custody level, so the visiting day comes from the incarcerated person and a call to the facility. There are no video visits at MDOC state prisons. The full approval process is in Visiting in Mississippi.

Getting There and Parking

Parchman is directly on U.S. Highway 49 West in the Delta.

Distances are approximate, based on map routing. MDOC publishes no facility-specific parking layout; visitors park in the designated visiting area, leave belongings locked in the vehicle, and are subject to vehicle search.

Nearby Services

Cleveland — a Delta State University town about 20 miles west — has the fullest range of food, gas, and lodging near the prison, with Indianola closer to the south. Bolivar Medical Center at 901 East Sunflower Road in Cleveland runs a 24/7 emergency room — (662) 846-0061 — and Greenwood Leflore Hospital to the southeast is another 24-hour ER. Delta hospitals have closed or cut services in recent years.

Learn More

For detailed information about visiting and communicating with someone in a Mississippi state prison:

Visiting in Mississippi — the application, dress code, and custody-level visiting
Mail & Packages — the photocopy system and addressing mail to P.O. Box 1057
Phone & Video Calls — the ViaPath phone and tablet system
Sending Money — depositing to a spending account
Medical & Mental Health — healthcare and raising a concern
Transfers — intake, classification, and finding someone

Sources

This page is compiled from the following publicly available sources. Policies change without notice — confirm current details with the facility before relying on them.