For more than 30 years, the Parchman Volunteer Fire Department in Mississippi has helped redefine the phrase "time served."
Operating out of the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, the department consists of one full-time fire chief, 11 staff volunteers that work at the prison in other positions, and a handful of the institution's inmates.
Parchman is just one of many inmate fire departments that have popped up in corrections facilities across the U.S. over the past three decades, but the concept is still fairly new.
California, Texas, Florida and Arizona all have corrections facilities that house inmate fire crews. In Utah in 2000, two Department of Corrections Firefighters were killed by lightning while fighting wildfires.
According to Department Chief Wesley Knight, he has kept an average of five inmate firefighters on his crew during his seven years with the department.
Currently, the department only has two inmate firefighters.
One of the main reasons the Parchman Department is not up to full strength is the tragic death of one of its own. Michael Davenport died March 9 after suffering smoke inhalation while fighting a house fire.
The 40-year-old inmate, who was serving a life sentence for homicide, is the first fatality for the department since its inception in 1975.
"It's been real hard on us," Knight said. "The staff and the inmates."
Knight said Davenport took pride in everything he did as a firefighter.
"Michael once told me that he felt like he was giving something back to the community," he said.
Knight said that he is now determined to get the department back to full strength and continue to serve the community as they always have.
"We're going to continue," he said. "We're not going to let this bring us down."
Knight, 56, who retired from the fire department in Clarksdale, Miss., where he worked for 28 years, heard about the opening from his wife Beverly, who then worked in the prison?s hospital.
"It's different from being out in the 'free world,' as the inmates call it," he said. "But as far as the fires and incidents are concerned, it's pretty much the same."
Those incidents consist of various types of fires including support for auto accidents, agricultural accidents and forest and brush fires.
Knight said that although his department includes inmates -- several of whom are serving sentences for murder -- there is no distinction between them and the other volunteers.
"When they put their gear on, there's not much difference," he said. "There's always been good interaction."
The department is assigned to Sunflower County, which is in close proximity to the prison grounds. Knight said that while their coverage area consists only of about five miles, the crew has come to the help of other departments more than 20 miles away in the past.
As far as the community voicing negative opinions about having inmate firefighters, Knight said that to his knowledge it's never happened.
"Most of the community around here is glad to have us responding," he said. "If you didn?t have us, the closest department is seven miles away."
During his first year with the department, Knight said they made close to 60 calls, but since then that number has dropped to around 20 per year.
"We've been working on trying to educate the public and even here at the prison," he said.
The inmate firefighters too have gained that education, as Knight said many of them have gained state and national certification and that once paroled, some have even gone on to work for other departments.
Although the state doesn't have mandatory training guidelines for the Parchman Department, Knight said he supplements his in-house training by bringing his crew to at least two local Mississippi State Fire Academy training events each year.
With the opportunity to gain firefighting experience and the ability to leave the prison grounds during incident calls, Knight said that most of the inmates jump for the chance to be part of the department.
"These inmates are proud to work on the fire department and have been considered the elite group among the other inmates," he said.
In order for an inmate to be accepted into the Parchman Department, Knight said there several prerequisites. The inmate most be of minimum custody, cannot be a sex offender, have no escapes on his record and the crime he is in for was not done in Sunflower County.
Despite these qualifications, he said the department still receives interest from inmates that meet them.
While the Parchman Department must now go through a rebuilding phase, Knight stays optimistic, and said he's staying put, for now.
"I feel great right now, health and all," he said. "Right now I'm just playing it day by day, trying to get this department back up to full strength."
As for the inmates, Knight hopes that they are able to take something away from their time on the department.
"I don't know if it gets them out of here any earlier," he said. "But I hope that it helps contribute to that."
