Investigative Reporters Steph Quinn and Mukta Joshi answered your questions on Reddit about their investigation that uncovered allegations that Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey used inmates in his custody to work on his family’s chicken farm.
Some former inmates said they fixed his personal vehicles. One even said she gave his wife back massages.
Read their answers below and read the full story here.
Some questions have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Was there any point in your investigation when you felt concerned for your personal safety? Did any of the former inmates express concern about their safety as a consequence of sharing their stories?
Click for Mukta Joshi’s answer.
Almost every single former inmate we spoke to (except the few who were happy to go on the record about their positive experiences) were worried about their safety and preferred to remain anonymous. Especially those who still live in Rankin County. Keep in mind that the law is not kind to repeat or habitual offenders of any kind, and all of these folks had at least one felony on their record, making them very worried about getting in any sort of trouble again.
We definitely noticed a culture of fear. Multiple male former trusties told us they try their best to stay out of Rankin County at all times.
For us, it wasn’t so bad. I will say it was a difficult story to report, especially as the press is increasingly perceived and treated with animosity by public authorities that ought to be transparent and answerable to the people. But we made every effort to be safe, responsible, and most importantly fair to the subjects of our reporting. It definitely helps to know that you’re doing everything in your power to dot your i’s and cross your t’s.
Click for Steph Quinn’s answer.
More than one male former trusty said they avoid Rankin County because they’re concerned officers will find any reason to pull them over – if they’re going 10 over the speed limit on the highway, for example. I remember when we asked one former trusty if he’d be willing to have his hands photographed for the story – keeping him anonymous, but still featuring a photo of him – he suddenly sounded so scared, and it really hit home for me the fear of retaliation that some former inmates feel, often after having really horrific experiences in the jail. Sometimes I imagine an alternate reality where it would be safe for them to openly tell their full stories – everything they’ve been through, how much they’ve grown – alongside their photos.
Q: In your article, there was a quote from one of the supervisors which claimed that they had no authority over the Sheriff’s budgets.
In your reporting for this story, were you able to review the specific budget documents, invoices, purchase orders etc? If so, whose name was on these documents as signing off on them being approved purchases? Is there any evidence that these purchases were made with seized drug money? If so, what would the evidence be for that?
Click for Steph Quinn’s answer.
I wish I had a better answer to this question! We had really, really hoped to be able to sit down with members of the Board of Supervisors and talk about the purchasing process, who from the Board of Supervisors has to approve what and when, and whether there’s a review process of sheriff’s department purchases after money has been budgeted for the department.
In short, the documents we have don’t show anyone in particular signing off on purchases. And yes, there is clear evidence that some of the purchases – such as the skid steer that Sheriff Bailey allegedly stored on his mother’s farm that was used to clear land – were made with seized drug money. We know that because the sheriff’s department’s budgeted funds are in a different “pot” of money from seized drug money. We had to request the documents separately, and some of the drug seizure purchases are explicitly labeled as such in the description column for the purchase. We also confirmed about the skid steer with a source who’s a former deputy.
And we tried hard to talk with supervisors, to no avail. When Mukta emailed one of the supervisors asking for an interview, the sheriff’s department’s lawyer replied to the email, saying no one from the county would talk with us. We showed up in person to the supervisors’ office, called and even asked the supervisors for an interview during a monthly BoS meeting. The answer was always the same.
Q: Do you think it will be more difficult in the current political climate to hold Bailey accountable for his misuse of actual people?
We seem to be okay with some pretty questionable behaviors from government officials, and Bailey is still sheriff after several other heinous allegations have been made public.
Click for Mukta Joshi’s answer.
Don’t mean for this to sound like a cop-out (no pun intended) but it seems like only time will tell. You are correct that it has gotten way more difficult to hold law enforcement accountable as the Department of Justice under this administration has deprioritized police reform. But the response this story received from within the Rankin County community was something that none of us had expected. People seem really, really angry. And sometimes, that’s the best part of local reporting: even if it doesn’t trigger reform at the very top, it can change minds within the community, and that can sometimes end up being even more impactful.
Click for Steph Quinn’s answer.
Quite possibly. There’s what’s happening at the federal level. The state auditor’s office has opened an investigation into the allegations from our story, but that office can’t prosecute. In addition to the allegations that the sheriff used inmates to work on the chicken farm, there are also the allegations that he used county property and resources, such as gravel and the skid steer, for his personal benefit. It’s possible that some of those allegations are more actionable from a legal standpoint than others, but I can’t really say. Time will tell!
Q: Were there ever reports of inmates being injured or ill after working for them, especially at the chicken farm? I cannot imagine and PPE being used and chicken barn dust is no joke. As an aside, it’s sad that the only thing the female inmates seem to be allowed to do is clean and office work. Did they ever produce the rules of the program for men or disciplinary policies for either sex? I don’t understand how you can have such a program without thoroughly planned out and documented policies.
Click for Mukta Joshi’s answer.
That is a GREAT question and something we will definitely start looking into. I will say, chicken farm-related injuries and illnesses didn’t come up while we were reporting for these stories, but we did certainly hear that it was not pleasant work at all. It involved, like Christian Dedmon said in that text to his then-wife, being “covered in chicken shit.” Which I personally have not experienced before but does not sound fun.
About the female inmates being relegated to cleaning (with the occasional exception of secretarial work) – man, we noticed that too! It was interesting because you would think at least partially, the idea behind working in jail would be to build skills for post-release life. And while the men had the opportunity to practice a bunch of different trades – which some of them continue to do in the “free world,” such as electric work and auto repair – some female trusties who started working after jail are doing just that: cleaning. Nothing wrong with cleaning, obviously, but it is undeniably very gendered work.
Click for Steph Quinn’s answer.
Seconding that this is an awesome question. I can’t speak directly to the availability of PPE on the farm, but I was struck by how former trusties we spoke with sort of shrugged off the nastiness and difficulty of the annual cleanout. I can’t speak for them, but I think it points to the thorniness of trusties’ relationships with sheriff’s department officials, and how trusty work – even work that (allegedly) broke the law – could be a survival strategy for inmates. I think it can be true that trusties were allegedly being used for the sheriff’s benefit AND that being one of the most trusted trusties, who was allowed to work outside the jail under looser supervision, was desirable. One of our sources said something like, even when you’re in jail, there’s some degree of choice. Another source talked about wanting to impress the sheriff to become a “blue suit” – the highest rank of male trusties – and said that part of the reason he wanted this was that it could make his life in the jail easier.
And I hear you about the cleaning. If I were a trusty, I would want to learn how to fix cars!
Q: Is it “trustees” or “trusties”?
Click for Mukta Joshi’s answer.
Thank you so much for this question – so many people responded to the story correcting this spelling and it’s great to get to clear up the confusion once and for all.
In a nutshell: it’s “trusties,” with “trusty” being the singular form, in the context of inmates. Basically it means trustworthy. Think, “I drove my trusty car!” But it is very confusing, because the word “trustees” also has a similar meaning. We were thrown off by this too!!
Click for Steph Quinn’s answer.
This is a question a lot of people have had, and it’s a good one! Everyone we talked with says “trustees” (with the emphasis on the second syllable). So in people’s everyday speech, it’s absolutely “trustees.” And I think there’s kind of an interesting slippage between the formal, Merriam-Webster spelling – “trusties” – and how it’s pronounced, since in the financial world, “trustees” are entrusted with valuable assets. And trusties are, too. We went with the dictionary spelling because of our organization’s style guidelines.
Q: How long has this practice been ongoing in Rankin County? Did any other sheriff predecessor know or take part in it?
Click for Steph Quinn’s answer.
We focused on Sheriff Bailey’s time in office, so I can’t speak definitively on what happened before. We know that the trusty system is old, in Rankin County and across the state. After civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer was arrested in June 1963 for riding in the “white” section of a Greyhound bus in Winona, Montgomery County jailers ordered two Black trusties to torture her. In 1972, a federal court found that at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, the use of armed “trusty shooters” to oversee inmates’ work in the fields resulted in dozens of inmates suffering gunshot wounds and beatings. And incarcerated farm labor itself – for instance, at Parchman Farm – was a successor to the convict leasing system, which sought to address labor shortages and reinforced white supremacy after the end of the Civil War.
Click for Mukta Joshi’s answer.
Also, former Simpson County Sheriff Lloyd “Goon” Jones, someone Sheriff Bailey considered a mentor, was killed when he was shot along with a jail trusty in his front yard.
Q: Have you faced threats of retaliation?
Click for Mukta Joshi’s answer.
Words like “defamatory” have certainly been thrown around, but besides that, not really. It’s our sources we’re more concerned about – many of them still have to live in Rankin County and for that reason were really scared to speak up.
Click for Steph Quinn’s answer.
Luckily, no. Aside from the “defamatory” language, there’s just been unpleasantness and some foot-dragging on our public record requests. I worry about our sources, though! I have such respect for them for speaking out at risk to themselves.
Q: In this investigation did you find any additional info on Rankin County’s “goon squad”? (Not sure if that’s super relevant here)
Click for Mukta Joshi’s answer.
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: We’re working on it. Our larger team, which includes our incredible colleagues Nate Rosenfield, Brian Howey and Jerry Mitchell are currently continuing reporting on the Goon Squad. Brian & Nate’s work in 2023 showed us that the Goon Squad wasn’t limited to the 6 officers who got sentenced in the Jenkins & Parker case, and that it was going on well beyond those two incidents, for nearly two decades. Many people told us that it was an open secret. Which means that story is far from over!
Click for Steph Quinn’s answer.
This is a really important point. The torture and abuse that have come to light through our colleagues’ Goon Squad reporting wasn’t limited to the officers who are in prison. We can’t say much here at this point, but there’s a lot more work to do!
