WITNESS
Donald Cabana served for five years as Warden of the maximum security, death row prison in Parchman, Mississippi, in the 1980s, until his distress at having to carry out executions overwhelmed him. He detailed his experiences in a 1996 memoir, Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner. In 2004, he resumed control of Parchman after spending time as an anti-death penalty speaker. Mr. Cabana has a long history in corrections, beginning as a guard at Parchman in 1972. He was also a warden in other facilities in Mississippi, as well as in Missouri and Florida, and was Acting Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections from 1986 to 1987. Donald Cabana is currently Chair of the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.
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STATEMENT
"I think the single most important issue in addressing these concerns is administrative accountability. There simply must be an effective way to hold prison officials accountable for the actions of staff.
"I don't know if a 'report card' is an effective approach. But I do believe that we can improve significantly in reducing staff on inmate and inmate on inmate violence. Better pay, better training and better educated staff are a good beginning. In the final analysis, however, without strong leadership at the top, without a demand for professional excellence, the levels of violence in America's prisons will continue to be a significant problem."
Excerpted from a written statement submitted to the Commission
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Note: Some witnesses submitted documents in addition to the written statement they prepared for the hearing. In most cases, those documents are not available on the Commission's web site.
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