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Jackson Mayor John Horhn asked state lawmakers for help raising money for the city’s water system during a Thursday committee hearing at the Capitol.

JXN Water, the city’s third-party water manager, raised the alarm several times this year over funding shortfalls and said last month the system was “insolvent.” The utility is losing $3 million a month, it says.

“We think that the state’s assistance is going to be required,” Horhn told members of the Capital City Revitalization Select Committee. “We have to come up with an additional revenue stream, at least temporarily, over the next few years until we can get the water system back to solvency.”

The mayor, a Democrat who took office July 1, listed a few avenues for funding, such as increasing tax diversions from the Capitol Complex Improvement District or increasing the city’s 1% sales tax. The latter, though, may put local businesses in a tough position, he added.

JXN Water’s funding shortfall includes money for debt payments. The utility warned in September that if it can’t make debt payments, the state would have to start diverting some of the city’s sales tax revenue. Horhn confirmed that was the case, but said Jackson was able to pay the $5 million owed by December. It’s unclear how much longer the city would be able to cover those payments without additional water funding.

The mayor went on to address what happens to the city’s water and sewer systems, which are both under the control of JXN Water, after the third-party manager steps aside. Horhn said he wants control of the systems to return to the city, and laid out a plan for an independent advisory board to run them separately from Jackson’s public works department.

His vision of the advisory board includes a majority of appointees from the Jackson mayor’s office. Because the city serves places outside of Jackson, such as Ridgeland and Byram, Horhn said a minority of appointees could come from the state or from those other municipalities. The board would then hire a third-party company to manage and operate the utilities.

Rep. Shanda Yates, an independent from Jackson and the committee’s co-chair, asked how Horhn’s plan would differ from lawmakers’ past attempts to put the city’s utilities under a separate utility authority. Those plans, the mayor said, gave the state a majority control. Moreover, a bill last year from Sen. David Parker, a Republican from Olive Branch, would have taken away Jackson’s ownership of the systems.

The governor would have likely vetoed Parker’s bill because it would have made the state responsible for Jackson’s debts, added Horhn, who served in the state Senate at the time.

Ted Henifin, who runs JXN Water, was invited to speak at Thursday’s hearing but couldn’t attend because of a “traveling conflict,” Yates said.

Both the mayor and Rep. Fabian Nelson, a Democrat whose district includes part of Jackson, criticized JXN Water over its handling of billing issues. The utility, for instance, doesn’t have a process to challenge bill amounts, Horhn said, adding his proposal would include an “appeals judge” to handle such cases.

“I have 10 constituents that have reached out to me in the last 24 hours with $37,000 water bills, $70,000 water bills, and they’ve all been told that it’s due to a leak,” Nelson said. “Every last one of them has had plumbers verify that it’s not a leak.”

Adding to the challenges, the utility doesn’t have anyone who customers can talk with in-person about billing issues, and constituents are having trouble getting answers through JXN Water’s phone helpline, he said.

“I have a lot of questions, but these are mainly geared toward JXN Water, which did not show up today,” Nelson went on to say. “This has to stop. We have people whose water is being turned off every single day.”

JXN Water told Mississippi Today earlier this month that it was shutting off about 1,000 accounts per week over nonpayment.

Yates said she would coordinate another time to bring Henifin before the committee. The chairwoman asked Horhn about a Jackson City Council vote earlier this month, which approved a resolution asking U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate to place control of the water and sewer systems back under the city. Council members echoed similar concerns from residents about communicating with the utility.

Wingate, though, has the ultimate say about when to turn over management of the systems, the mayor said. Henifin has projected he’ll be the third-party manager until 2027.

JXN Water is still awaiting a decision from the judge, who appointed Henifin to his role in 2022, regarding a proposed rate increase the utility first requested in April. The current water bill rates, even with perfect collections, wouldn’t be enough to fund operations and pay for the system’s debt, Henifin has said. The collection rate is now about 70%.

In a statement after Thursday’s hearing, the utility said it had told lawmakers ahead of time that Henifin couldn’t attend.

“The creation of JXN Water itself was born out of a period when collaboration and coordination around solutions for Jackson’s water system were lacking,” the statement said. “We welcome any dialogue aimed at strengthening the system for the people of Jackson and ensuring that future governance structures are grounded in transparency, accountability, and apolitical leadership.”

Correction 10/23/2025: This story has been updated to show Rep. Shanda Yates is an independent.

The Jackson Public Schools board voted unanimously to deny a charter school’s request to expand into high school grades — but that isn’t stopping Ambition Prep’s plans, its leader said. 

The Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board approved Ambition Preparatory Charter School’s request to expand into grades nine through 12 at its July meeting. The school currently serves kindergarten through eighth-grade students. However, leaders of the local public school district voiced their disapproval at their board meeting Tuesday night.

“The establishment of this high school will have significant long-term implications, including decreased enrollment in existing high schools, particularly smaller ones, resulting in an impact on district fiscal operations,” JPS Superintendent Errick Greene said. He also noted that a new high school would likely affect teacher recruitment at the public school district. 

Greene made clear in an impassioned speech that the district views Ambition’s foray into higher grades as the establishment of a new school, not an expansion.

It’s an important distinction.

According to state law, charter schools can only be established in areas where the local school district is rated A, B or C if the local school district’s board approves. There’s no appeal process, so if the school board denies the request, the process ends. New charter schools can only be established without local school board approval in areas rated D or F. 

But expanding an existing charter school to serve more grades is relatively new territory. The Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board, which is tasked with approving new or expanded charter schools, established a new policy in 2023 that addresses charter schools that want to expand.

Lisa Karmacharya, executive director of the authorizer board, says that, in this instance, Ambition Prep is not starting a new school, so it doesn’t have to follow the state law for establishing new charter schools.

The JPS vote came as a shock to Karmacharya when reached by Mississippi Today. 

“I am absolutely speechless,” she said. “My mouth dropped open.”

Karmacharya said that DeArchie Scott, Ambition’s executive director, completed a “healthy and robust application for the expansion” under the new policy and should continue with the process. 

That’s exactly what Scott plans to do, he said. 

“It’s not a new application, so it goes based on what the (local public school) district was rated at the time of approval, which was an ‘F,’” he said. “It’s already been approved by our authorizer board, so we don’t need approval from JPS.”

Ambition Prep, which opened in 2019, got a C in the latest Mississippi school report card, as did Jackson Public Schools. 

Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School in the Delta was previously approved as the state’s first charter high school, but that was through a merger. Ambition is the first school in the state to take advantage of the charter board’s new expansion policy to start serving higher grades. If the charter’s buildout is completed in fall 2027, it would make Ambition Prep the second charter high school in the state and the only charter high school in Jackson.

It’s not clear how the dispute will be resolved, or if it will escalate to litigation.

A spokesperson for Jackson Public Schools said the district’s board of trustees would “pursue all available options at its disposal to support its position regarding Ambition Prep’s request.”

During a standing-room-only meeting in downtown Jackson, Latrice Rogers — the entrepreneur known for her role on the Oprah Winfrey Network reality TV show the “Belle Collective” — read aloud the email addresses of residents who have complained about her one-year-old restaurant, Fondren Taste Bar and Grill.

In an attempt to clear the air, Rogers said she’d reached out to each one of them.

Upon hearing her email, Jennifer Baughn, an architecture historian who lives down the street from Taste, in the otherwise sleepy north Fondren neighborhood off Meadowbrook Road, spoke up.

“That’s me,” she said so members of the Jackson Planning Board could hear her. “I’ve never received an email.” 

“But I have it here,” Rogers insisted as other residents began to say that they, too, had not heard from her. “I literally have it here.”

Residents in close proximity to Taste have complained for months that the establishment, which many of them refer to as a nightclub despite Rogers’ insistence it is a bar and restaurant, has disturbed their quality of life with loud music and traffic.

At issue Wednesday was Taste’s proposal to build nine residential units — which it hoped to use as Airbnbs — on top of its existing restaurant in a section of Fondren historically home to offices, convenience stores and fast-food chains. The units are part of Rogers’ plan to invest in north Jackson that began when she opened a beauty supply store in 2022 after owning a beauty business in the area for more than a decade. 

“We’re not going to invest in the neighborhood just to destroy it,” she told Mississippi Today. 

To open Airbnbs, the city’s zoning administrator, Ester Ainsworth, had recommended Taste pursue rezoning its white brick restaurant, one of the few newly redone commercial buildings in this part of Fondren, from commercial to mixed-use development. 

The proposal rankled residents of the otherwise low-key neighborhood. Six people, including Baughn, spoke in opposition to what she called a “de facto entertainment district” with music that is too loud and patrons who park illegally and drive recklessly. 

“This has been the most stressful year of my life as every weekend has been taken away from us,” she said. “We cannot enjoy the peace of our household and that has happened without any due process from our neighbors.” 

After about an hour of discussion, the planning board overwhelmingly voted to recommend denying the rezoning. The issue will eventually go before the city council, which has the final say on whether or not to grant Taste’s request. 

“Thank you for your investment in the city,” said Michael Booker, the planning chairman who represents Ward 2 and voted against the measure, as Rogers and her attorneys walked out of the room. 

As they exited, they vowed aloud to build hotel rooms instead.

Terris Harris, an attorney who spoke on behalf of Rogers, told the planning board that he thought an above hotel would be permitted under the restaurant’s existing zoning classification, so Taste could pursue its goal of building the units even if the board nixed its Airbnb-apartment idea. 

“That would be well within the requirements of their zoning, so it’s tomato, tomato, chocolate, chocolate, however you want to say this, it’s the exact same thing,” he said.  

Harris added that he believed residents’ opposition to Taste’s proposal had “absolutely nothing” to do with a second floor of residential units but rather a mistaken belief that Taste operates as a nightclub when it is in fact a bar and restaurant. 

“These aren’t fly-by-night business folks,” he said. “These are business folks with multimillion dollar enterprises who have spent over a million in that place. … This is not a nightclub. That’s not what this is. This is a fine dining restaurant, and the cigar lounge they have in there is super small, so it’s not a lot of people in there.” 

Rogers insisted she had done everything she could to ameliorate the concerns, such as buying parcels of land around the restaurant to create additional parking and even turning over security footage that police wanted when they investigated a shooting near a nightclub across the street from Taste called Parlour Room. The bullets injured eight people and police reportedly found at least 30 casings outside.  

“We have hired extra security guards. We have got a noise ordinance reader. We got with the police to make sure we have the exact same ordinance reader as they do,” Rogers said. “We started closing earlier. We don’t even have a DJ where we started off having a DJ.” 

Baughn and others conceded Taste is not the only bar on the street causing problems for residents. 

“It’s a different crowd,” she said of the Parlour Room. “It’s a little more criminal of a crowd than Taste, but it’s not as popular as Taste, and it has adequate parking, which Taste does not.” 

Liz Brister, the president of Downtown Jackson Partners who lives in the neighborhood and has renovated homes there, said a nonprofit organization working on Fondren’s economic development plan is looking at the need to rezone the area to encourage residential density. 

Doug Boone, the executive director of the Fondren Renaissance Foundation, claimed Taste has made no attempt to hear from residents and had, in fact, misled them about the nature of its business from the start. 

Brenda Davis, a resident who moved to North Fondren in 1989 and decided to stay there after she retired in the late 2000s, said she hears “booming bass” and “cars screeching” every weekend. 

“‘No communication’ might not be the word,” she said of the relations between the bar and residents, “but no communication between the two that would cause a compromise.” 

Ainsworth, the zoning administrator, said she had witnessed the bar’s patrons parking up and down the street, flouting No Parking signs. Emily Pote, a planning board member representing Ward 7, asked who is supposed to hold the bar responsible for that, to which Ainsworth replied, “the city.” 

“But sometimes people pay us no attention, and they do whatever they feel is necessary for their survival,” Ainsworth said. 

After the meeting, Baughn said that her street has had problems over the years with loud establishments, including a spate of rave clubs about 20 years ago that were shut down after residents got the city council and the fire marshal involved. 

Compared to the raves, Taste has the potential to be an improvement, Baughn said. 

“I love that building, and actually, what they’ve done with it isn’t bad,” she said of Rogers’ redesign. 

Baughn said she doesn’t know why bars or nightclubs have flocked to this area of town over the years, except for its excess vacant rental space. She believes the solution now is to sever the commercial and residential sides of North Fondren by closing off the street. 

“I do think there could be a compromise, she has just not been interested in it,” Baughn said of Rogers. “She could’ve talked to us today, but she didn’t.”

A federal judge in Mississippi has admitted that his staff used artificial intelligence to draft a flawed court order, after months of speculation and an inquiry from a U.S. senator. 

U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate sent a letter on Tuesday to the director of the Administrative Office of the Courts in response to an inquiry from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley. Wingate acknowledged that his law clerk used an AI program to compose an order that paused the enforcement of a state law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Mississippi public schools. 

The order, issued July 20, was factually inaccurate — naming defendants and plaintiffs that weren’t parties to the case, misquoting state law and referencing a case that doesn’t exist — which led the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office to raise concerns. 

Wingate then replaced the order with a corrected version, wiped the flawed order from the docket, and denied a request from the Attorney General’s Office to restore the original order with errors to the public docket. He refused to explain the errors, calling them “clerical” mistakes.

Months later, Grassley sent a letter to Wingate, asking him to address the errors and the speculated use of AI.

Wingate finally acknowledged that one of his law clerks used an AI program called Perplexity to analyze publicly available information from the docket to craft the order. But Wingate emphasized no privileged or sealed information was used. Wingate says he still does not plan to restore the original order to the docket, in an effort to avoid confusion. 

The judge conceded that the order was a draft opinion, and it did not undergo proper review before being added to the docket. Wingate said he’s taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again. 

The corrective measures include requiring all draft opinions, orders and memos to undergo a second, independent review. He will also require all cited cases be printed and attached to the final draft. 

“I manage a very busy docket and strive to maintain the public’s trust by administering justice in a fair and transparent manner,” Wingate wrote. “Given that I hold myself and my staff to the highest standards of conduct, I do not expect that a mistake like this one will occur in the future.”

Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, commended Wingate, a Reagan-appointed judge, for acknowledging the mistake.

“Each federal judge, and the judiciary as an institution, has an obligation to ensure the use of generative AI does not violate litigants’ rights or prevent fair treatment under the law,” Grassley said in a statement. “The judicial branch needs to develop more decisive, meaningful and permanent AI policies and guidelines.” 

Still, AI usage in the federal judiciary is a serious issue, and it’s largely uncharted territory, especially among federal judges.  

The legal profession has seen a rise in AI use in recent years, with people relying on software or processes that attempt to replicate aspects of human work. These use vast amounts of data to accomplish tasks such as researching court cases and citing them in legal briefs. 

But these systems are not perfect and can “hallucinate,” or provide false information. 

Judges in Mississippi have punished attorneys in both federal and state courts for using AI because attorneys have an ethical and professional responsibility to tell the truth in court. 

But there’s little accountability when the roles are reversed. 

Robert Conrad Jr., the director of the federal Administrative Office of the Courts, also sent Grassley a letter noting that he recently established an AI task force composed of judges and technology experts to recommend new policies on AI usage in the federal court system. 

Conrad said the task force, during the summer, published interim guidance on AI, suggesting that attorneys should review and independently verify all AI-generated content and should consider disclosing when they’ve used AI to help craft documents. 

ExxonMobil had a preliminary conversation with Satartia leaders on Monday about a potential large economic development project for the tiny town.

Michelle Douglas, the mayor of Satartia, confirmed the meeting but said the potential project is still in early stages. She and others familiar with the proposal said they were bound by agreements not to discuss details.

ExxonMobil did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, and others familiar with the proposal would not say what type of development is being proposed.

Satartia, with a population of 40 people, is the smallest incorporated city in the state. It is in Yazoo County, about 45 miles northwest of Jackson.

Three large-scale data centers are currently under construction in Mississippi, totaling over $26 billion in investment, and they are some of the largest economic projects in the state’s history. In a September interview with Mississippi Today, Haley Fisackerly, CEO of Entergy Mississippi, said multiple companies are exploring bringing new data centers to the state.

Data centers being built across the country require huge amounts of electricity and water, and many of the deals involve energy companies.

Central District Public Service Commissioner De’Keither Stamps also told Mississippi Today that economic development discussions were taking place in Satartia, but he could not provide specifics because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

ExxonMobil has publicly said it plans on building power plants to service data centers.

“What I will say about that project is we are here and already doing our due diligence to support all economic development in the state,” Stamps said.

Although the specifics of the project are unknown, two people not authorized to discuss sensitive business details told Mississippi Today that it could be one of the state’s most significant economic development projects. 

However, both people emphasized that the discussions are highly exploratory in nature, the project could be located elsewhere and considerable work would be needed at the state and local levels before the project could advance further. 

A former University of Mississippi employee fired in September over social media commentary she reposted about the assassination of Charlie Kirk has filed a federal lawsuit against the university’s chancellor, claiming the chancellor violated her First Amendment rights.

Lauren Stokes, a former executive assistant in the University of Mississippi’s development office, said she was terminated over a social media post she endorsed on her private Instagram account about Kirk, the right-wing activist and CEO of the political organization Turning Point USA.

University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce fired Stokes over speech that is constitutionally protected, even if it was offensive, her attorney argued in a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court.

“A private employer might require its employees to conform to a point of view but the state acting through its public university cannot,” wrote attorney Allyson Mills. “After all, today’s policed are tomorrow’s policemen. No state institution should purport to wield such power.”

Boyce was sued in both his personal and professional capacities. University of Mississippi spokesperson Jacob Batte told Mississippi Today the university does not comment on pending litigation.

On Sept. 10, Kirk was assassinated while speaking on a college campus in Utah. That night, Stokes reposted to her Instagram account a statement made by another person that lambasted Kirk’s views on issues like guns, abortion and race.

“For decades, yt (white) supremacist and reimagined Klan members like Kirk have wreaked havoc on our communities, condemning children and the populace at large to mass death for the sake of keeping their automatic guns,” the statement said. “They have willingly advocated to condemn children and adult survivors of (sexual assault) to forced pregnancy and childbirth. They have smiled while stating the reasons people who can birth children shouldn’t be allowed life-saving medical care when miscarrying. They have incited and clapped for the brutalizing of Black and Brown bodies. So no, I have no prayers to offer Kirk or respectable statements against violence.”

The post generated immediate backlash for Stokes, who deleted the post and apologized hours after publishing it. That same night, Boyce happened to dine at a restaurant owned by Stokes and her husband, the complaint says.

By the next morning, a social media firestorm had kicked into high gear, with conservative activists and even some state leaders drawing Stokes’s post to her employer’s attention. That mirrored similar episodes around the country in the days after Kirk’s killing.

Journalists and teachers have been fired for their comments on his death, with several conservative activists seeking to identify social media users whose posts about Kirk they viewed as offensive or celebratory.

The University of Mississippi placed Stokes on administrative leave around 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, according to the complaint.

A little under four hours later, Mississippi State Auditor Shad White, a vocal critic of what he calls “woke” initiatives in higher education, posted about the episode on X.

“To Ole Miss, did an Ole Miss employee just repost this insane reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder? Answer,” White wrote.

About an hour after that, university officials fired Stokes, according to her complaint. Then, 20 minutes later, Boyce released a statement that didn’t name Stokes, but confirmed her firing and called her comments “hurtful” and “insensitive.”

“The comments run completely counter to our institutional values of civility, fairness and respecting the dignity of each person,” Boyce said. “We condemn these actions and this staff member is no longer employed by the university.”

In Stokes’s legal complaint, her attorney points out that the speech in question “related to a subject of obsessive news interest” and was not even hers, but someone else’s that she reposted.

“By terminating Lauren for reposting the speech, the University says that Lauren is not allowed even to agree with a point of view held by a substantial portion of the nation,” the complaint said. “Stated differently, the University says it gets to tell its employees what to think on matters of public concern. The interests in freedom of speech, indeed of thought, are extraordinarily high here.”

Stokes said she has received death threats and bomb threats against her restaurant that forced it to close for two weeks. She is seeking damages, legal fees, and a declaration that Boyce violated her First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit was filed just over a week before Vice President JD Vance and Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, will speak at the University of Mississippi in Oxford on Oct. 29.

The city of Jackson will continue to own thousands of acres surrounding its airport under a settlement that is expected to clear the way for economic development on what’s long been considered some of Mississippi’s most coveted real estate. 

The agreement was approved by the Jackson City Council by a 5-2 vote Tuesday. It allows Flowood and Pearl, growing cities in Rankin County, to annex Jackson-owned but currently unincorporated land to the west and east of the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport. The deal seeks to conclude a seven-year-old lawsuit in which those suburban cities sued to incorporate some of the land.

The airport is a few miles east of downtown Jackson. It is in Rankin County and is the rare example of a Mississippi city owning land outside the county where the city itself is located.

Through the annexation, the municipalities must now provide essential services that can entice development to the acres of currently empty, grassy land along Airport Road and the East Metro Parkway, a major thoroughfare in Rankin County. Jackson also gets to incorporate a portion of the land around the airport into the capital city as part of the deal.

The council’s vote comes amid a separate, nearly decade-long battle over governing control of the city’s airport, which the deal passed Tuesday does not impact.

“It’s very ripe for having a high-end development for office space, retail space and other space like that,” said Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote, likening the area’s potential to that of Highland Colony Parkway in Ridgeland. “But it’s just been on hold because of the confrontation surrounding the airport.” 

The arrangement concerns the minutiae of Mississippi land law and what it means for a city to own versus incorporate land, said Councilman Kevin Parkinson, who oversees Ward 7 where the airport is located. He filmed a 14-minute YouTube video explaining why he supported the agreement.

“All of our fates are tied up together, and we can’t continue to fight each other if there’s ways for things to be mutually beneficial,” Parkinson said. 

The Jackson airport has owned the land for decades and could have leased it for development, but since the land was not city-incorporated, Jackson was not providing essential services like water, police and fire protection, making development difficult. 

Under Tuesday’s agreement, the city of Jackson will continue to profit off any leases on land it owns because the airport will essentially act as a landlord for developers. 

“It’s not like Flowood is going to put a bunch of undesirable businesses there with no insight from the airport,” Parkinson said. “That’s what it means to own the land. You get benefits, including you can simply say, ‘Nope, I don’t want that business here.’” 

Meanwhile, Flowood and Pearl will provide services in their respective incorporated areas, and in turn collect the property tax and sales tax revenue generated there. 

This is what Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes, who voted against the measure, said causes the “bad taste that’s in a lot of citizens’ mouths,” as they’ve witnessed a boom of sales-tax-generating development along Lakeland Drive in the last couple of decades, mostly benefitting Flowood.

“The question that came up when they were doing it is: How how in the world this is supposed to be airport property, but the city of Jackson gets not a dime in sales tax? So they feel there’s some trickeration taking place,” Stokes said during Tuesday’s council meeting. “And they feel the same thing is going to happen with this. They feel this is a slow way to take the airport.”

The two suburban cities also agreed to support Jackson’s request to annex parts of the land around the airport. 

“Rather than a point of contention, it needs to be a point of one plus one equals three rather than one plus one equals zero,” Foote told Mississippi Today. 

Pearl Mayor Jake Windham could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Flowood Mayor Kathy Smith was out of the office for a ribbon cutting, her assistant said. 

A statement from Jackson Mayor John Horhn heralded the agreement as a win for the capital city, noting that the airport-owned land will benefit from the water and sewer system that Pearl will set up within the next year and a half. 

“This deal does not give away one inch of land,” Horhn’s statement said. “The City of Jackson remains proud owner and steward of the airport and its surrounding lands, and we are committed to ensuring that this partnership strengthens, rather than diminishes, our city’s economic future.” 

The vote also seeks to end to a legal dispute between Jackson, Flowood and Pearl that began in 2018 after the latter two cities filed a lawsuit to annex thousands of acres around the airport. 

Parkinson said he voted for the deal in part to avoid a trial in the lawsuit, which the cities filed in Rankin County. Not only did he believe a Rankin County judge would be more favorable to Flowood and Pearl, Parkinson said the judge would have only been able to rule on whether those two cities can annex the land they wanted — leaving no path forward for Jackson to annex the airport land that it wanted. 

As a bargaining chip at the settlement table, the two cities offered to go to Rankin County to help Jackson’s annexation request, Parkinson said. 

“To their credit, Pearl and Flowood came to partner, they came to negotiate,” he said. 

Jackson’s Ward 2 Councilwoman Tina Clay joined Stokes in voting no on the deal. 

Correction 10/22/25: This story was updated to reflect that Kenneth Stokes and Tina Clay voted against the agreement.

Poor sanitation in jails has been the subject of civil rights lawsuits for decades. Plumbing issues, vermin infestations, feces-covered walls, and limited access to basic hygiene products, such as soap or tampons, are common complaints.

Courts almost universally agree that a lack of basic sanitation violates detainees’ constitutional rights, said David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. Pre-trial detainees have sued, arguing that filthy conditions violate their due process rights. If a person has already been convicted, foul living conditions could be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Despite widespread legal challenges, many jails across the country are still filthy. Litigation against substandard conditions often ends in a settlement, Fathi noted, with officials agreeing to a change in policy, or better monitoring and enforcement, in exchange for not taking the case to trial. Settlements are typically the fastest route to clean things up, but they don’t set a legal precedent for other facilities, meaning there’s nothing requiring jails in the same county or state to adopt reforms.

Good hygiene in jail is often about more than detainees’ willingness to keep clean. Understaffing, overcrowding, facility maintenance, and mental health issues can all play a role. For example, the ACLU of Oregon, settled a lawsuit in 2019 against a county jail that had allegedly crowded a dozen women into a single intake cell, where they had to beg for toilet paper and menstrual products, and were denied showers.

“People don’t want to live in filth,” said Dr. Fred Rottnek, director of community medicine at St. Louis University and former medical lead at the St. Louis County Jail. “They are at the mercy of the administration to provide needed services because they can’t do it on their own.”

Reporters from The Marshall Project’s local news teams dug into the state of sanitation at jails in St. Louis; Cleveland, Ohio; and Hinds County, Mississippi, home to Jackson, the state capital. They found that poor jail maintenance and management, as well as understaffing, means many detainees are left to live in unsanitary conditions.

St. Louis City, Missouri

On most days, Marvin Young is desperate for a shower. For over a year, he’s been detained at the St. Louis City Justice Center awaiting trial on an attempted robbery charge.

“I haven’t had a shower in three to four weeks,” he said in June from the jail’s visiting room, pulling at the stains on his jail-issued T-shirt. Even through the glass, the odor was unmistakable.

Detainees are supposed to have shower access at least three times a week, according to jail policy, which was last updated in 2020. (The city did not respond to multiple requests for confirmation that staff still adhere to these policies). In the past, detainees have accused jail staff of withholding water access to punish people for speaking out about their conditions or asking questions. Jail policy says correctional officers can also force people to shower in certain circumstances. According to Young, however, people are desperate for the chance to rinse off.

“We gotta take bird baths in our cell,” he said, describing how he tries to cover the small opening in his cell door for privacy before attempting to clean himself over the sink. “I try to keep my spirits up, my health up… [but] I’ve been so mad, my knuckles are black from punching the walls.”

Current staffing levels mean there aren’t always enough officers to supervise people during recreation time — the hour that detainees get outside their cell for showers, phone calls, and stretching their legs — or to check and see if cells are clean. The jail, which houses roughly 800 detainees, is currently down about 50 correctional officers, according to jail commissioner Nate Hayward.

Hayward, who started at the jail in September after more than three decades at the county jail, said his goal is to hire 40 correctional officers by January, as well as two additional maintenance workers to address clogging in the showers and other facility needs.

The city’s former jail commissioner, Doug Burris, told The Marshall Project in April that roughly half of the pods in the jail were on a 23-hour lockdown. People formerly incarcerated at the jail described being held for days at a time in cells with feces on the walls. Their only reprieve was the hour they could spend in the dayroom — when there was enough staff to supervise it.

To make matters worse, detainees rarely have enough hygiene supplies, said Khanika Harper, a member of the city’s Detention Facilities Oversight Board.

The jail is supposed to give each detainee a personal hygiene kit with a toothbrush, soap, and deodorant when they first enter the jail. Once they run out, they have to purchase replacements through the commissary, or apply for free items through a caseworker if they can’t afford the commissary. Certain items, such as underwear, can only be replaced for free after a caseworker has physically inspected the old ones, according to jail policy.

Harper said she’s heard multiple reports of people not receiving soap, deodorant, or cleaning supplies for their cell and common areas, leading to a buildup of dirt and bacteria on people and surfaces alike. The showers have cockroaches and feeble water pressure, she added. Men wash their clothes in the sink when they can’t get clean laundry. Women on their periods are supposed to receive free pads and tampons from caseworkers, but Harper said detainees told her those supplies don’t always make it to women in time.

“If they have mercy on you, they’ll get it to you when they get it to you,” she said.

Hayward, however, is optimistic that some of the strategies he implemented at the county jail could also work in the city. For example, on days when the county jail was too short-staffed for detainees to get out for recreation hour, he instructed shift captains to let people out for the few minutes they needed to take a shower.

“If they don’t get out all day,” he said, “we gotta at least give them a shower.”

Cuyahoga County, Ohio

The Cuyahoga County Jail doesn’t have enough showers. The jail has been cited by the Ohio Bureau of Adult Detention year after year for not meeting the state’s standard of one shower for every dozen beds.

From June 2024 to June 2025, there were 334 work orders placed for malfunctioning or unusable showers, with complaints ranging from clogged drains and no water, to black mold in the shower with a leaking ceiling, according to records obtained by The Marshall Project.

Even if the jail cleared the backlog, it would still fall short of its requirement because some of its cells are holding two people, which exceeds the state’s ratio, Jennifer Ciaccia, press secretary for the Cuyahoga County Department of Communications, wrote in an email. Aging infrastructure exacerbates the strain on the jail’s plumbing system, Ciaccia added, leading to “frequent malfunctions.”

Detainees — some of whom can spend months awaiting trial — are responsible for cleaning the showers and other parts of the facility. But there is no set cleaning schedule, Ciaccia noted. Corrections officers are tasked with ensuring that the housing units are cleaned daily, and that showers are powerwashed “regularly.” Officers are required to provide residents with cleaning supplies, including solutions, mops, brooms, scrub pads, and toilet brushes.

Despite the mandate, detainees consistently complain of filthy conditions, including scratches and dirt on surfaces, disgusting sinks, and toilets caked in body fluids and grime. Staying clean is hard, they said, because the water pressure is so weak you can’t wash your hands. One detainee said he had to use the same spoon for every meal, cleaning it in the sink attached to his toilet.

In August, Tianetta Carter spent several days in jail after being arrested for a domestic violence charge. She refused to shower, she said, because the stalls were filthy. The toilets were so dirty, she asked for menstrual pads from a corrections officer so she could clean them first. Every time she went to the bathroom, she said she had to ask a corrections officer for toilet paper, and she was held in a cell where the toilet was backed up for hours.

“No matter how much they clean it, it’s still bad,” she said. “It’s so bad.”

Hinds County, Mississippi

When court-appointed monitors walked through Hinds County’s Raymond Detention Center in 2022, they found a myriad of deplorable conditions: broken toilets and showers, empty cells used as dumpsters, mice, and people sleeping on floors in general areas, with no access to toilets. One thing particularly troubled a monitor about the cleanliness of a housing unit: Two men had been found covered in feces.

Three years later — even though the dumpster cells have been cleaned up and the most problematic housing unit is closed — monitors said the jail is getting worse.

“Overall, the Hinds County jail system has regressed over the past two-and-a-half years,” monitor David Parrish said in an August court hearing.

People detained there described vile conditions: smells of sewage, limited access to showers, toilets and laundry facilities.

The jail’s sanitation problem is just one symptom of larger operational failures, said Kathryn Bryan, who was the jail’s administrator in 2021. It is a reflection of the jail’s many other issues: overcrowding, understaffing, gang control and crumbling infrastructure. The jail has a well-documented history of negligence. In October, a court-appointed federal receiver took control to manage the jail’s budget and day-to-day operations.

Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment on the conditions, citing pending litigation and the incoming receivership.

“There’s nothing clean about that place,” said Tedrick Francois, who spent two weeks in jail this summer, after being arrested for allegedly attempting to deposit the same checks more than once. He was first held for hours in a dark holding cell with about 20 others. He remembers a broken toilet overflowing and spilling human waste onto the floor. His housing unit had one functioning shower, the monitoring report found.

Reports by court-appointed monitors say the jail is severely understaffed, with 71 corrections officers, about one-third of the number necessary to operate the facility. In the gaps, incarcerated people take control. “Pod bosses” control the distribution of food, hygiene products, and in some cases, who gets a cell, the monitors found.

“For the most part, there are no rules,” Francois said. “It’s the wild, wild west in there.”

That was the situation facing Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby Saturday at Florida. Lebby chose to run another play and Florida intercepted a pass to sew up a two-point victory. The Clevelands discuss the pros and cons of the strategy – and a whole lot more college football, high school football, the Saints and college golf.

Stream all episodes here.

In a city with historic, persisting challenges – from infrastructure woes to a dwindling tax base – how do you measure the success of a new mayor’s first 100 days in office?

“Whether we get things done,” Jackson Mayor John Horhn said after his State of the City address Tuesday. “ I think there’s a visible difference in how the city is starting to look. Things are cleaner. They’re not totally where we want to be by far, but we’re starting to see signs that the city is pushing itself up. Our homicide rate is down. It’s not down to where we want it to be, but it’s 40% down from this time last year. We have investors that are looking at Jackson in ways that they haven’t looked at it before.”

In his speech at the downtown Mississippi Museum of Art garden, Horhn praised his “crackerjack staff” and the work of his appointments to several task forces formed at the start of his administration. He touted the $125 million secured for road resurfacing and the work that began Monday to fix water leaks at the Jackson Zoo. 

“ We must right size Jackson for today. This city was built for a quarter of a million people, but it’s home to 144,000 citizens now. That gives us open space, and that’s an opportunity,” Horhn said, citing 325 blight elimination cases the city has worked on in recent months. “ I believe it’s time we reimagine our vacant and dilapidated spaces as opportunities.”

Horhn, a Democrat, promised during his mayoral campaign to return basic functionality to city services. Robert Gibbs, one of Horhn’s major supporters and the chair of his transition team, told Mississippi Today shortly before Horhn took office that evidence of the mayor’s abilities would come by way of cleared up rights-of-way and filled potholes.

“We gotta clean up the city. I think that’s something we can do in 30 days,” Gibbs said in June.

He cited cutting back trees and vegetation that hang over neighborhoods and block stop signs, making for hazardous intersections, and efforts to fill potholes within 72 hours of them being reported.

“I think if people see basic services restored, their confidence that we’re going to do the bigger projects will happen,” Gibbs said. “But those are some things that we can tackle. Now, what I don’t know is do we have the tools to do it?”

Since Horhn took office, the city has filled more than 4,000 potholes, an average of 38 each day, and made about 1,800 patches to streets, according to figures Chief Administrative Officer Pieter Teeuwissen provided Mississippi Today. This does not reflect a concerted escalation in street repairs. The city was filling an average of 40 potholes a day in the three months before Horhn took office, according to Teeuwissen’s numbers.

To aid this work, the city recently secured the funds from a $40 million bond issue, which WLBT reported had been in the works for nearly two years, to repair ditches, drainage, streets and bridges.

But deploying city crews to fix roadways is just a sliver of what’s on Horhn’s plate. He’s also had crises to manage. In his first month in office, the federally-appointed third-party manager of the city’s water system, JXN Water, began shutting off water to apartment complexes with past due bills, displacing families. 

Horhn formed a Housing Task Force to study solutions to this and other housing dilemmas across the city. 

 ”No landlord should put a family in harm’s way or cut off basic services,” Horhn said. “We’re committed to making sure residents of Jackson have access to water and a safe home, and we’re taking actions to support them and encourage all landlords to do right by their tenants.”

Meanwhile, Horhn and city leaders have worked to oppose a rate hike for water customers that JXN Water says is necessary to bring financial stability to the utility. 

In Horhn’s second month, Jackson Police Department’s chief stepped down, prompting a national search to replace him, which hasn’t yet been completed. 

“It became clear that time isn’t the measure that matters most. The process is. What counts is getting this decision right, not getting it fast,” Horhn said. 

Horhn also reinstituted the Jackson Civil Service Commission, a group that ensures fair hiring practices and which had been inactive for some time.

Horhn, who previously served in the state Senate, has made inroads with state leaders. In both legislative chambers, lawmakers are convening to study policy proposals to improve Jackson. In Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann’s recent announcement of a new Senate committee focused on economic development in Jackson, he described the city as “entering a new chapter” after having battled with the previous administration.

 Hosemann’s announcement “represents an important step forward for both Jackson and the state of Mississippi,” Horhn said. “I want to thank him and our state senators, along with Speaker (Jason) White and members of the house for their leadership, their willingness to support the potential that exists in Jackson, Mississippi.”

Also, Horhn said in his address, the state’s economic development agency Mississippi Development Authority has for the first time assigned a dedicated project officer to Jackson, meaning “ we’re gonna have someone on the ground, part of our team, whose sole job is to ensure that opportunity doesn’t pass our city by.”

“ This kind of partnership is what progress looks like, city and state working hand-in-hand to deliver results for the people of Jackson,” Horhn said. 

The Jackson City Council, which gained three new members in July, has worked in conjunction with the new administration, including confirming Horhn’s nine cabinet appointments, reinstating a generally ineffectual youth curfew, adopting a resolution supporting the city taking back control of its water system and passing a roughly flat budget of $337 million.

While Horhn hopes to advance larger projects on Jackson’s horizon, such as the Pearl River flood control project, which is expected to spawn economic development and has raised talks of a potential casino, he’s also ushering in progress on existing projects, like the museum trail connection to downtown, or launching new, smaller-scale efforts like a volunteer clean-up effort called CleanJXN Gateway Beautification Day, which took place Saturday. 

What’s next? Horhn cited an in-the-works market value analysis “to take a clear-eyed look at where we are today,” including assessing the city’s assets, the conditions of its housing stock, schools, roads, and water and sewer, which he said will be used as the foundation of a citywide comprehensive plan.

“ There is an old saying that he who fails to plan plans to fail. Jackson must plan. Not out of a fear of failure, but out of a deep belief in our future,” Horhn said.