Word: parchman
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Under Mississippi's earthy and antiquated penal system, the tougher and more ruthless a convict is, the better off he is. At the 16,000-acre Parchman Prison Farm such bad actors are used as "shooter trusties," equipped with rifles and vertical stripes, and set to guarding their lesser, not so enterprising, fellows. Loyalty (i.e., shooting an escaping convict) is often rewarded with freedom...
...years of crime-which included grand larceny, cattle stealing and blasting an old man with a shotgun and then drowning him in the Mississippi-hefty, hardfisted, 33-year-old Clarence B. ("Hogjaw") Grammar was eminently qualified to be a "shooter." After he began his life term at Parchman in 1940 he demonstrated other good qualities: he beat up fellow prisoners and talked politely to the guards. When he killed a convict who was attacking a prison guard in 1947, the state gratefully released...
Recaptured after his second escape from Mississippi's prison farm at Parchman, lanky ex-Robber William Frank Moody became a model prisoner. At 22, he busied himself with a correspondence course in radio repair, was soon earning pin money in the pen by fixing radios for fellow prisoners. Because his whole attitude suggested reformation, Bill was allowed to wear the vertical striped trousers of a trusty...
...station W5BNK to the Federal Communications Commission. With its long-range direction finders in Washington, FCC tracked down Moody's transmitters to a loo-mile area. In the process, two other unlicensed operators were caught. Finally, after three weeks, busy FCC field crews pinpointed station W5BNK at the Parchman prison farm...
Most sensational prison break was the successful escape in 1940 of a notorious killer and Parchman trusty, Kennie Wagner, ex-trick shot circus star who killed five men in three states. Last February, 19 other prisoners broke prison in the largest break in Mississippi history. All but three have been recaptured. The prison is also criticized for working its men too hard-competition to make a profit is too keen among its 17 farming units. This year Mississippi's Governor Paul B. Johnson heeded the reformers. His order: more attention to rehabilitation of the prisoners, less to making money...