Overview

• Mississippi, along with Alabama, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Virginia, is one of the only states with no time limit on how long a person can be jailed without being indicted.
• Most people in Mississippi's county jails have been locked up at least three months while waiting to go on trial due to infrequent grand jury sessions.
• Nearly 5,400 people were in Mississippi's county jails, with 2,683 pretrial detainees jailed for over 90 days, 1,100 jailed for at least nine months and 747 jailed for over a year.
• Mississippi does not require consistency among the 82 counties about how often grand juries meet to consider indictments.
• Five counties reported that grand juries meet monthly, but the state's largest county, Hinds, has grand juries that meet six times a year in one district and three times a year in another.