Consumer protection refers to the laws designed to aid retail consumers of goods and services that have been improperly manufactured, delivered, performed, handled, or described. Such laws provide the retail consumer with additional protections and remedies not generally provided to merchants and others who engage in business transactions, on the premise that the consumers do not enjoy a sufficient bargaining position with respect to the businessmen with whom they deal and therefore should not be strictly limited by the legal rules that govern recovery for damages among businessmen. The overarching goal is to protect individuals and the interest of the public in general from unfair and misleading activity in business and commerce (such as false advertising and deceptive trade practices) and scams perpetrated by criminals (such as identity theft and pyramid schemes) that harm a substantial number of consumers.
Parchman is a small unincorporated town in Sunflower County, Mississippi, United States, in the Mississippi Delta region. Best known as the home of Mississippi State Penitentiary, formerly called Parchman Farm, Parchman is the oldest prison and the only maximum security prison in the state. Parchman also houses inmates who have been sentenced to death in Mississippi on death row. Instead of building a permanent execution chamber there, the state built the first portable electric chair in the United States, carried on a pickup truck and used until 1955, for executions at Parchman.