Case 021: Operation Mississippi Hustle

February 25, 2015. Christopher Epps stood before a judge to make a guilty plea. No one ever expected to see him as a defendant in a court of law.
Join us in the Cabin as we discuss the rise and fall of Christopher Epps, the FBI operation that took him down, and the power players in the prison industry.
Art
"Brown Wooden House" by Johannes Plenio
Music
"Tumbleweed Texas" by Chris Haugen
Sources

1. “Private Prisons” by the American Civil Liberties Union.
2. “Pros and Cons of Private Prisons” by criminaljusticeprograms.com, Wiley.
3. “Baton Rouge prison contractor Michael LeBlanc sentenced in Mississippi corruption probe” by Gordon Russell, The Advocate.
4. “Mississippi Auditor: Prison Company Must Pay $2 Million for No-Show Workers” by Joseph Neff and Alysia Santo, The Marshall Project.
5. “Justice Department Finds Unconstitutional Conditions at Mississippi Prison” by The Equal Justice Initiative.
6. “Private Prisons in the United States” by Mackenzie Buday and Ashley Nellis, Ph.D., The Sentencing Project.
7. “Conditions at Mississippi’s Most Notorious Prison Violate the Constitution, DOJ Says” by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting.
8. “No-Show Prison Workers Cost Mississippi Taxpayers Millions” by Alysia Santo and Joseph Neff, The Marshall Project.
9. “Louisiana businessmen ensnared in Mississippi prison corruption case await sentencing” by Bryan Stole, The Advocate.
10. “Mississippi’s Prison Bribery Scandal Is in the Past, But the State Still Hasn’t Learned Its Lesson” by Madison Pauly, Mother Jones.
11. “Inside a Private Prison: Blood, Suicide and Poorly Paid Guards” by Timothy Williams, The New York Times.
12. “Chris Epps sentenced to almost 20 years” by Jimmie E. Gates, The Clarion-Ledger.
13. “With Vestavia Hills arrest, 'Operation Mississippi Hustle' corruption investigation comes to Alabama” by Kyle Whitmire, AL.com
14. "Former Commissioner of Mississippi Department of Corrections and Local Businessman Plead Guilty in Federal Court” by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (fbi.gov)
15. “The Mississippi Hustle Investigation: Violating the Principal-Agency Relationship at the Mississippi Department of Corrections” by David Hughes McElreath, Daniel Adrian Doss, Carl Jensen, Michael Wigginton, Stephen Mallory, Leisa S. McElreath, Lorri C. Williamson, Terry Lyons, and Walter Flaschka, University of Mississippi and University of West Alabama (2015)
16. “The Prison Reform Blues” by Albert Samaha, Buzzfeed.
17. “Epps probe: 'Miss. Hustle' started with sex scandal” by Emily Le Coz, The Clarion Ledger.
18. “Commissioner of Mississippi Department of Corrections and Local Businessman indicted by federal grand jury” by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Mississippi (justice.gov)