Sunflower County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,971, and was estimated to be 23,029 in 2024. The county seat and the largest city is Indianola.
Sunflower County comprises the Indianola, MS Micropolitan statistical area, which is included in the Cleveland-Indianola, MS Combined statistical area. It is located in the Mississippi Delta region.
Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP), also known as Parchman Farm, is a maximum-security prison farm located in the unincorporated community of Parchman in Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. Occupying about 28 square miles (73 km) of land, Parchman is the only maximum security prison for men in the state of Mississippi, and is the state's oldest prison.
Begun with four stockades in 1901, the Mississippi Department of Corrections facility was constructed largely by state prisoners. It has beds for 4,840 inmates. Inmates work on the prison farm and in manufacturing workshops. It holds male offenders classified at all custody levels—A and B custody (minimum and medium security) and C and D custody (maximum security). It also houses the male death row—all male offenders sentenced to death in Mississippi state courts are held in MSP's Unit 29—and the state execution chamber. The superintendent of Mississippi State Penitentiary is Marshall Turner. There are two wardens, three deputy wardens, and two associate wardens.
A prison farm (also known as a penal farm) is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts work — legally or illegally — on a farm (in the wide sense of a productive unit), usually for manual labor, largely in the open air, such as in agriculture, logging, quarrying, and mining. In the United States, such forced labor is made legal by the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution; however, some other parts of the world have made penal labor illegal. The concepts of prison farm and labor camp overlap, with the idea that the prisoners are forced to work. The historical equivalent on a very large scale was called a penal colony.
The agricultural goods produced by prison farms are generally used primarily to feed the prisoners themselves and other wards of the state (residents of orphanages, asylums, etc.), and secondarily, to be sold for whatever profit the state may be able to obtain.