As of 1971 guards patrol MSP on horseback instead of on foot. The rear entrance is protected by a steel barricade and a guard tower. In 1985 Robert Cross of the "Chicago Tribune" said "The physical surroundings--cotton and bean fields, the 21 scattered camps, the barbed wire enclosures--suggest that nothing much has changed since the days, early in this century, when outsiders could visit Parchman State Penal Farm only on the fifth Sunday of those rare months containing more than four."