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A federal court Thursday halted, for now, a rate increase the manager of Jackson’s beleaguered water and sewer systems has for months said is necessary to keep the utility afloat. 

U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate said he needed more time to make a decision, adding he would have an update on the matter by the next hearing on Nov. 19. 

JXN Water also received news Wednesday that Congress approved to set aside $54 million for daily operations, Ted Henifin, the manager of the third-party utility, said. Lawmakers had already awarded the funds to the city, but initially did so only for capital projects. 

Since 2022, the utility has made relatively fast strides improving water pressure throughout Jackson as well as repairing burst sewer lines across the city. Moreover, for the first time in a decade, the water system is compliant with all federal drinking water regulations, Henifin said last week. 

But without added revenue, JXN Water said it will continue to lose money and be unable to address sewer system repairs, including two major, ongoing overflows – one on Mill Street and another on I-55 near Home Depot.

Since the spring, Henifin has pleaded with the court for a rate increase after JXN Water ran out of its initial $150 million allocated for daily system upkeep. The hike would raise the average Jacksonian’s monthly bill – which includes costs for drinking water as well as garbage pickup and wastewater – by 12%, the utility says. 

City officials, including Mayor John Horhn as well as all of the Jackson City Council, have argued the utility shouldn’t be able to charge more until it collects payments from a broader swath of the city. 

Even if JXN Water had a 100% collections rate – it currently sits around 70%, far below the national average of over 90% – those bills wouldn’t yield enough revenue to keep the utility from losing money, Henifin has repeatedly told critics of his proposal. 

Jackson officials, attorneys for the ACLU, and Rep. Fabian Nelson, a Democrat whose district includes south Jackson, all spoke against the rate increase during a status conference in front of Wingate on Thursday. Wingate appointed Henifin to lead the city’s water recovery in 2022. 

Jackson City Attorney Drew Martin criticized JXN Water for not considering sooner its revenue needs. This increase would mark the second rate hike since Henifin took over. The manager previously has said it took a while to realize how much money the system needed to function. 

“What we hear from residents is ‘you can’t just spend money first and assume we can afford it,’” Martin said Thursday. 

In September, the utility ramped up its collection efforts, shutting off about 1,800 accounts. JXN Water has disconnected 4,403 total accounts since the start of 2025, adding it plans to continue disconnecting 500 to 1,000 accounts per week. It did not say how many accounts have since caught up or have been reconnected. The utility said it plans to have “worked” all accounts by mid-2026. 

In a court filing last week, Nelson submitted letters from constituents with thousands of dollars in water debt. After not receiving a bill for the first time in years, they couldn’t afford the down payment JXN Water requires to keep their taps on, the letters said. 

For others who wrote in, the utility told them they had high charges because of a leak at their home, although some claimed to have hired plumbers who told them the opposite. Some constituents complained of rude representatives from the JXN Water call center. 

Wingate himself said he called the center as an experiment and got conflicting answers from different operators. Henifin admitted Thursday the utility needs to better train its operators, which he said would begin around the new year.

 “JXN Water has forgotten about the people and the citizens,” Nelson told the court while also praising the progress Henifin’s team has made so far.

The utility initially planned to send a notice of the rate increase to customers on Nov. 15 and for the change to take effect Dec. 15. In Wingate’s 2022 order that put Henifin in charge, the language doesn’t say the manager needs the court’s approval to implement a rate increase.

But at the eleventh hour of Thursday’s conference, Wingate enjoined, or stopped, Henifin from moving forward. JXN Water attorneys said they would need a decision by the end of November to enact the rate hike by the end of 2025, leading to the judge setting the next conference for Nov. 19. 

The two-day hearing, which began last week, looked in-depth at a number of issues, including both the city and JXN Water alleging the other owes it money.

‘More than frustrating’

Henifin on Thursday discussed the city’s water debt, which as of October was $6.9 million. Most of that is from leaks at the Jackson Zoo, which should be fixed in the next two to three weeks, Jackson’s chief administrative officer Pieter Teeuwissen said.

But in the meantime, Henifin said, JXN Water has held “hostage” $6.3 million the utility owes the city in sanitation fees. Because residents pay for garbage pickup in the water bill, that money first goes to JXN Water. 

Wingate questioned the utility chief about withholding those funds. Henifin said JXN Water has spent the money to help keep its daily operations afloat. When the judge asked Henifin what authority allowed that power, he admitted he had “none.” The manager said the utility will pay back the city once Jackson pays its water debt. 

Teeuwissen and other city officials criticized JXN Water, saying not having sanitation revenue puts a strain on Jackson’s budget. Martin, the city attorney, said “it is more than frustrating” to hear Henifin withheld the funds without any authority. 

JXN Water’s books and help from the Legislature

Horhn reaffirmed his stance Thursday against the proposed rate increase. The mayor is hopeful the state Legislature will work with him in the 2026 session to find other streams of revenue to invest into the water and sewer systems, and said it’s premature to raise rates before seeing what that may look like. 

Horhn offered several suggestions to lawmakers in October, such as raising the sales tax or diverting funds from the Capitol Complex Improvement District.

City officials also appealed to Wingate to allow access to JXN Water’s financial records, stating they couldn’t agree to a rate increase without having that information. 

While Henifin last week agreed to do so, he later asked to condition that access to prevent records from becoming public. Without context, he argued, it’d be easy for someone to misinterpret the numbers. The 2022 order gave Henifin the power to run the utility without being subject to public record laws. 

After initially pushing back on the conditions, the city said it would agree to a protection order preventing the records from becoming public without Henifin’s approval. 

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

When legislators talk about “school choice” and diverting public dollars to private schools, they often package it as empowering parents. But often overlooked in the conversation is that after years of underfunding and unfair criticism, Mississippi’s public education is seeing measurable success.

According to the latest Kids Count Data Book, Mississippi was ranked 16th in the nation for K-12 education. Our fourth graders have led the nation in reading and math gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress rankings, and graduation rates have reached historic highs.

There are so many wonderful things happening in Mississippi public education. Now is not the time to pull away from a shared system that is working. Vouchers and unaccountable “choice” schemes threaten the progress of the many in favor of a few.

The adage “it takes a village to raise a child” has never been truer. Educators are not seeking to replace parents but to partner with them. Schools consistently plead for parents to be active participants in the educational process.

Public schools are our community’s schools, run by local boards, funded by taxpayers and accountable to the public. Suggesting that only private schools or home options are legitimate undermines our collective investment that ensures every child, regardless of income or zip code, has access to quality education.

Mississippi’s recent gains were not driven by privatization. The state directs a very small percentage of kindergarten–12 funding to private programs. Our progress stems from intentional public investments in early literacy, Pre-K expansion, teacher support, accountability and local district innovations.

Yet, Mississippi has chronically underfunded its schools. Since the Mississippi Adequate Education Program was created in 1997, legislators only fully funded it twice, leaving a cumulative shortfall exceeding $3.3 billion.

Even in 2023, despite revenue surpluses, education was shorted by $161 million. The newly created 2024 Mississippi Student Funding Formula provided roughly $50 million less than full MAEP funding would have delivered.

We cannot afford to carve public money away from schools already asked to do more with less. Each diverted dollar reduces resources for classrooms, support staff, fine arts programs, counselors, nurses and special education.

Who truly benefits — and who loses — when vouchers enter the system? These programs primarily serve affluent families already able to afford private school tuition. They cluster benefits in urban areas, where private schools are more abundant, leaving rural Mississippians with fewer options and underfunded local schools.

When voucher programs win, public-school students and their teachers lose — facing larger class sizes, fewer resources and diminished support in the classrooms where most Mississippi children learn.

Public schools are accountable through testing, audits and transparency. Voucher-funded schools, however, are rarely held to the same standards. Many select their students, exclude those with disabilities or cloak financials in privacy.

Public dollars deserve public oversight. If a school takes tax money, it should be held to the same accountability expectations as every Mississippi public classroom. 

Other states offer clear warnings. In Tennessee, voucher students underperformed compared to their public school peers. In Arkansas, costs ballooned and private schools hiked tuition, excluding low-income families. Louisiana’s choice expansion deepened budget gaps.

Mississippi should learn from these examples: When states funnel public money into private schooling, inequality grows while outcomes stagnate.

Rather than dividing limited resources, Mississippi should double down on what works.

We should:

• Fully fund the Mississippi Student Funding Formula so districts can operate reliably.
• Expand early literacy and math intervention programs.
• Support teacher recruitment, retention and development, particularly in rural areas.
• Strengthen support for special education, fine arts education, counseling and technology.
• Encourage innovation through magnet programs, dual enrollments and career tech centers within public systems.

Proponents of vouchers call “choice” freedom, but real freedom is not abandoning public responsibility. It is building a society where every child, regardless of income or geography, can attend a great public school.

Mississippi’s progress proves what collective investment can achieve. We should not dismantle progress with policies that favor the few. Public dollars belong in public schools.

The real choice before us is simple: a future where all children succeed, or one where some succeed at the expense of others. That’s a choice we must not accept and must do our due diligence to fight against.

Bio: Louise Smith, 2023 Mississippi Teacher of the Year and 2024 NEA Foundation Horace Mann Award Winner, is a band director on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She has been featured on the cover of NEA Today, where she talked about teacher trauma and stress, and in US News and World Report, where she was named  as one of the “Twenty Professionals Who Made a Difference During the Pandemic.” In her spare time, she enjoys playing her flute in the Coastal Winds Wind Ensemble and traveling the world with her husband.

If this Saturday’s Florida-Ole Miss football game were a bowl game, we all know what its name would be: The Lane Kiffin Bowl. That’s because the worst kept secret in college football is that Florida has zeroed in on Kiffin to be its next head coach.

And, in keeping with the corporate sponsorship of bowl games these days – as in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, Goodyear Cotton Bowl and the Rose Bowl presented by Prudential – I’ve got the perfect name for this one: The Lane Kiffin Bowl, presented by Jimmy Sexton.

Sexton, of course, is Lane Kiffin’s agent. He also represents coaches named Nick Saban, Kirby Smart, Kalen DeBoer, Steve Sarkisian, Mike Norvell, James Franklin, Hugh Freeze and a host of others. He has negotiated hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for both coaches and athletes so he could easily fund the bowl game sponsorship. He is the Babe Ruth of sports agents. And you know he is loving Saturday’s Lane Kiffin Bowl (6 p.m. kickoff, Vaught-Hemingway Stadium).

Sexton also loves the fact that coaching vacancies exist at LSU and Auburn. The more the merrier, you know. So get your calculators out, and let the bidding begin. You get college football blue bloods Florida and LSU involved in a bidding war and no telling how high the bids will go. 

The fact Ole Miss is a 16.5-point favorite over Florida on Saturday tells you all you need to know about why the demand for Kiffin’s services is so high. Florida has won three national championships and eight SEC Championships since 1990. Ole Miss hasn’t won so much as an SEC division championship in that same period.

Yet, in his six seasons at Ole Miss, the 50-year-old Kiffin has guided the Rebels to 53 victories against just 19 defeats. Perhaps more impressively, his Ole Miss teams are 13 games over .500 in the SEC. Compare that to Tommy Tuberville, who was 12 games below .500 in the SEC when he left Ole Miss in 1998 to take the Auburn job. (Sexton was Sen. Tuberville’s agent, too.)

Little wonder Florida wants Kiffin. Gator fans look at Kiffin and see Steve Spurrier 35 years ago. They see a brash, visor-wearing, offensive-minded coach whose wide receivers always seem to run wide open through opponents’ defenses. They see what Kiffin has done at Ole Miss and can only imagine what he might do at Florida.

Ole Miss enters Saturday’s game at 8-1 and No. 7 in the college football playoff rankings. This has the potential to be the greatest season in Rebel football history. But at a time when everyone who bleeds red and blue should be focused on beating Florida, many are instead worried sick about losing their coach. Keep in mind, they have been down this road before.

The Rebels were 8-1 and ranked No. 11 about this time in 2022. The Auburn job was open then and various news reports had Kiffin headed for the Plains. And you know what happened next. Ole Miss, a clearly distracted football team, lost four straight games.

Eventually, Kiffin stayed at Ole Miss. The Rebels have won 30 games in the nearly three seasons since. Ole Miss has given Kiffin everything he has asked for – beyond a salary of  about $9.5 million per year. Ole Miss supporters are bankrolling a football NIL budget of more than $20 million a year and an assistant coaches salary pool of more than $8 million a year.

We could debate forever which is the better job. Five years ago, I would have said Florida, hands down. But not now. The transfer portal and NIL have changed everything in college football. Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter, NIL guru Walker Jones and, yes, Kiffin have been on the cutting edge in all that. 

Florida, with a bigger stadium, is located in a much larger state amid much more football talent. But with all that comes higher expectations. Remember, Dan Mullen won 60% of his games in nine seasons at Mississippi State and then took the Florida job. He won nearly 70% of his games in four seasons with the Gators – and got his butt fired.

Kiffin could end all that speculation and avoid a repeat of 2022, Instead, in a press conference earlier this week he added fuel to the fire. “There are still advantages for the traditional ‘blue bloods,’” Kiffin said. “Kids still care about stadium size, history, Heismans, national championships, and location to talent…”

I have no clue what Kiffin will do. He may not either. I do know all this speculation has really increased interest in a game in which a 9-1 team is heavily favored over a team that has won only three games and already has fired its coach. The Lane Kiffin Bowl, it is.

Brian Howey, Mukta Joshi and Nate Rosenfield are reporters for Mississippi Today. They examined the power of sheriffs’ offices as part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship. This story was reported in collaboration with Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. To listen to an audio version of this investigation, visit the Reveal website. This story also was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Alicia Patterson Foundation and The Pulitzer Center.

For years, guards in a jail outside Jackson terrorized those in their care, according to dozens of people who say they endured, witnessed or participated in violent assaults.

Guards dragged inmates into blind corners, where cameras couldn’t capture acts of violence. They beat people behind closed doors. And they encouraged favored inmates to join in on the brutality.

Former inmates and guards said the violence at the Rankin County jail created a culture of fear and was widely accepted by officials as a way of keeping order, an investigation by Mississippi Today and The New York Times has found.

More than a dozen former inmates recounted being beaten for nonviolent infractions, like talking back to guards or getting caught with contraband. Many said a special group of inmates, known as trusties, helped guards beat troublemakers, lending fists whenever needed. Sometimes, the jail’s highest-ranking officials instigated the punishments or handed them down themselves, according to former guards and inmates.

The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jail, has a documented history of brazen violence. Last year, the Justice Department began investigating the agency for potential civil rights violations after Mississippi Today and The Times revealed that a group of detectives and patrol deputies, some of whom called themselves the “Goon Squad,” had been torturing suspected drug users for nearly 20 years.

This portrait of life inside the Rankin County jail is drawn from interviews with more than 70 former inmates. Many of their descriptions of widespread violence are supported by medical records and photographs, as well as incident reports written by guards and a video that shows guards shocking a man with an electrified vest.

Four former guards, three of whom asked to remain anonymous, also said they had witnessed unjustified beatings by other guards and trusties. Most described the violence as a weekly occurrence.

In a statement, the department’s attorney, Jason Dare, called the reporting “baseless.” The Rankin County jail, he wrote, “is one of the cleanest and best-run jails in Mississippi, with jailers never having been found to use excessive force in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

After reviewing the findings, Sean Tindell, the commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, said on Wednesday that agents from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation had been assigned to investigate the allegations.

Since 2013, at least 11 inmates from the jail have sued the department, alleging they had been assaulted by guards or trusties. The vast majority represented themselves and most of the lawsuits were dismissed because of missed deadlines and court fees, or other technicalities.

The attacks, described in the lawsuits and in interviews with former guards and inmates, ranged in severity from slaps and whippings to brutal beatings that left inmates with bloody wounds and broken bones. Three guards and nearly two dozen former inmates said that trusties and guards would purposefully drag inmates into areas with no surveillance cameras before beating them.

Morgan Curtis, a former trusty who has been in and out of the jail since 2015, said the way guards would order trusties to attack inmates was “like a command to a pack of dogs.”

In interviews, nine former trusties, most of whom requested anonymity because they feared retaliation, admitted to helping guards beat inmates. They said the highest-ranking trusties were expected to back up guards during volatile situations or attack inmates so that guards would not have to do so themselves.

This group of trusties, recognizable by their blue jumpsuits, earned a nickname: the Blue Wave.

One former trusty described an incident from 2020. He said that on the orders of guards, he beat an inmate who had flooded his cell, kicking him repeatedly.

The following year, the jail’s top administrator, Barry Vaughn, confronted an inmate who had failed a drug test. Vaughn punched him so hard, the inmate said, that it broke his nose and knocked out two dental crowns.

Christian Dedmon, one of five former Rankin County deputies who was sentenced to federal prison for torturing two Black men in 2024, said that while he was working at the department he had watched Vaughn beat inmates in his office. A former guard described seeing several similar beatings. Vaughn declined to comment on the allegations.

In 2019, a man who briefly escaped the jail was lifted into the air by his throat and choked by a sheriff’s deputy, several inmates and a guard said. Bryan Bailey, the sheriff of the department, later bragged about the incident, according to Dedmon.

Dedmon has sent hundreds of emails from a federal prison in New Jersey, describing how his willingness to partake in violence helped him rise through the ranks. He has said that he wanted it known that the brutalities he committed were part of a deeply ingrained culture at the department.

He previously shared information about the use of taxpayer-funded equipment at Sheriff Bailey’s family farm, allegations that led to an investigation by the state auditor.

“They made me powerful and respected, made me actually feel like somebody, like I had done a good job,” Dedmon wrote. “It’s OK to beat drug addicts, it’s OK to take from the taxpayer, so why would I not mirror them?”

Beatings behind closed doors

The Rankin County Adult Detention Center is tucked behind the courthouse on the main drag of Brandon, a town of about 25,000 people with one of the lowest crime rates in the state.

Several hundred inmates, many of them accused of drug crimes and other nonviolent offenses, live in rows of beige cells stacked two stories high. Many have not been convicted of a crime and are awaiting their day in court.

Over 10 months, reporters examined 69 alleged incidents of violence against inmates at the jail that occurred from 2012 to 2024.

They included 21 encounters in which guards documented that they had used force against inmates, and why, in incident reports. These reports are routinely filed whenever guards encounter issues. Their descriptions of violence differed greatly from what inmates said had happened.

But in a number of cases, reporters were able to interview eyewitnesses who supported the accounts of the victims. In several cases, medical records corroborated the injuries that inmates described.

In the case of Larry Buckhalter, the violence was filmed — by a guard.

In 2018, Buckhalter began a one-year sentence for possessing a small amount of cocaine. He was intellectually disabled, his family said, and people often took advantage of him.

According to three former guards who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Buckhalter was nicknamed “Crying Larry” by guards and other inmates because he had a habit of pestering jail staff with small requests.

One day, he asked for a Coca-Cola. A cellphone video obtained by Mississippi Today and The Times shows Buckhalter sitting quietly in a chair, strapped into a stun vest that is typically used to control violent inmates during court hearings.

Off camera, a man jokes that Buckhalter is going to bite off his tongue. A woman, who is also off camera, tells Buckhalter to give his consent.

Buckhalter takes a deep breath. “My name Larry and I volunteer to this,” he says.

The vest is activated. Buckhalter screams as his body convulses.

“Now you get a Coke,” the woman says. “It’s all over! I’m so proud of you, Larry!”

In his statement, Dare, the department attorney, did not address the guards’ actions. He criticized the reporting as “alleged rumors by unnamed sources who have no personal, first-hand knowledge of events,” and pointed out that reporters had not spoken to Buckhalter, who died in 2021.

Tindell, Mississippi’s public safety commissioner, called the video “appalling and utterly unacceptable.”

David Fathi, the director of the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that using force can be justified in certain circumstances, like if an inmate poses a threat; but doing so without cause or as punishment, he said, is “categorically inappropriate.” Corporal punishment in U.S. jails and prisons was deemed unconstitutional in the 1960s.

Fathi reviewed several incident reports filed by guards. He said the reasons they cited for using force were so vague they should have raised red flags to supervisors, and that the justifications fell far short of the typical threshold followed by jails and prisons.

In one such report, a guard wrote that he had struck an inmate, Dustin Rives, in the face because Rives had verbally threatened another guard. The blow broke Rives’ jaw, medical records show. Another report stated that guards struck Carvis Johnson and threw him to the floor in 2020 because he yelled threats and turned toward them after being ordered to face a wall.

For years, the man in charge of monitoring the jail was Vaughn, a captain who was recently promoted to undersheriff, making him second-in-command of the sheriff’s department.

According to a former deputy, a former guard and 14 former inmates, Vaughn often beat inmates who broke the rules, slapping and whipping them during interrogations in his office.

“ When you walked through his door, he had a shelf. And on the side of the shelf, he had like a wooden stick, a wooden baseball bat, two or three antennas,” said Cameron Kennedy, a former inmate who said Vaughn had questioned him on several occasions.

In June 2021, Vaughn called Kennedy and several other trusties who had failed drug tests into his office, one by one.

When Kennedy refused to explain where they had gotten the drugs, he said, Vaughn slapped him hard enough to give him a black eye.

Three of the other men who had failed drug tests said Vaughn had punched or whipped them with a car antenna. One of the men was Woodrow Lamont Lewis, the trusty who said Vaughn had knocked out his dental crowns that day. The men said they also saw other inmates return bloodied and bruised from Vaughn’s office.

A few months after the failed drug test, Kennedy was caught with a cellphone, an incident report shows. Vaughn handcuffed him to a chair and struck his shins and thighs with a car antenna, he said.

“He never did stop,” Kennedy said. “I’m talking about, like, 10 or 15 minutes, rapping me with it.”

Dedmon, the former deputy who is in prison, wrote in an email that he once saw Vaughn repeatedly punch an inmate who had smuggled drugs into the jail.

Vaughn directed reporters to speak with the department’s attorney, who denied the allegations.

Cigarettes and ‘free world’ chicken

Some of the country’s first trusty programs began in the early 1900s in Mississippi prisons.

Places like Parchman, a notorious prison in the Mississippi Delta, were known to select trusties from among their most violent inmates. The trusties, armed with guns and whips, were tasked with disciplining other inmates or forcing them to perform backbreaking work in cotton fields.

A federal court ruling in 1972 deemed trusty-on-prisoner violence unconstitutional, leading to the widespread dismantling of the programs in prisons across the nation.

Today, modern versions of trusty programs are common in county jails, though participants are generally banned from using physical force. These programs put nonviolent offenders to work, helping them learn job skills.

In Rankin County, many former trusties spoke glowingly about the program, crediting it with turning their lives around.

“It was the biggest blessing in my life,” said Cameron McKenzie, a former trusty. “I’ve been out now 20 months. I’m married, got full custody of both my kids, just bought a house, good job, you name it.”

Many inmates in the county jail are there only for short periods, while they await sentencing, but trusties usually serve their entire sentence in the facility, rising through the ranks over months or even years.

The most senior trusties — those who earn blue suits — have far better living conditions than other inmates. Former trusties said they slept in their own cellblock, in unlocked cells, and sometimes got passes to visit their families.

Many could roam the facility freely, play video games and work outside the jail. One former trusty, Cameron McCaskill, said he was allowed to keep a pet dog and order pizza.

“A blue suit is unrestricted,” Sheriff Bailey said during a 2020 interview with a Mississippi lobbying group. “Once they get a blue suit status, that is almost like being an employee here.”

Dare said trusties were not allowed to use force.

“ I do not believe that is specifically spelled out in a policy,” he said in an interview. “I do know it is a practice that trusties do not go hands-on.”

But several former guards and participants of the program said that the jail staff expected some trusties to provide extra muscle in exchange for their privileges.

“ If something is going on with the officer and they need assistance, you need to be there,” said Lewis, the former trusty. “If you ain’t there to help them, whether they are winning or losing, then you already know you’re next.”

Three others said trusties were rewarded, sometimes with “free world” food, for joining the violence.

“People would do just about anything for a cigarette, or a box of Church’s chicken with a honey biscuit,” said Phillip Smith, a former trusty. “That was the motivation of the Blue Wave.”

Dozens of former inmates, including many who participated in the program, said they had witnessed trusties hitting or kicking other inmates, or holding them down while guards beat them.

Of the 11 inmates who have sued the sheriff’s department since 2013, five said in their lawsuits that trusties attacked them with guards. All but one had their lawsuits dismissed.

Carvis Johnson, an inmate who had a long history of disciplinary infractions, claimed in a 2020 lawsuit that he had been beaten by guards and trusties. Court records show that Mr. Johnson settled his lawsuit, but the department declined to provide further details about the settlement.

Incident reports show that a confrontation began after Mr. Johnson shoved feces under his cell door and broke a sprinkler, flooding his cell. Trusties were brought in to clean up the mess. Guards led Mr. Johnson out of his cell and knocked him to the floor after he verbally threatened them, the reports show.

In an interview, Brock Reed, a former trusty, said a guard told a group of trusties to give Johnson “a sample” and that they should beat him because they would be the ones stuck cleaning up his mess.

Reed said the guards led Johnson to a corner widely known for being a camera blind spot. A supervisor’s routine review of the incident confirmed there was no security camera footage of what happened, in part because “hallway camera does not show where inmate was in the hall.”

When Johnson hit the floor, Reed kicked him in the hip and lower back, he said.

“I wasn’t going to be the one trusty to tell the police, ‘No, I’m not doing this,’” he said. “I know how they look at you for that.”

Christopher Mack, a former inmate, sued the department last year, claiming trusties and guards beat him in 2021. When he made bail and left the jail with twin black eyes the next day, Mack said, Sheriff Bailey approached him and asked who had caused his injuries.

“ I looked at him and said, ‘Mr. Bailey, you know who did this to me, your officers and trusties did this to me,’” Mack said.

The sheriff cursed under his breath, Mack said, and stormed off.

A battered escapee and a bragging sheriff

In September 2019, William Keith Richards found out what could happen to trusties who took advantage of their freedom.

Richards, a blue-suit, had nearly completed his sentence when he walked out of the jail one Friday. Officials did not notice he was gone until he missed church that Sunday, an incident report shows.

When Richards was caught, other blue-suit trusties were ordered to gather at a garage entrance of the jail, where Bailey berated them for not informing guards of the escape, four former trusties said in interviews.

Bailey told the trusties they should take a good look at Richards, because he was the reason they were about to lose their special privileges, two of them said.

Richards was escorted back to the jail by Deputy Wes Shivers, a 6-foot-8 former U.F.C. fighter. After they arrived, Shivers lifted the inmate into the air by his throat and choked him, said two former trusties and a former guard. In an interview, Shivers confirmed that he had returned Richards to the jail but denied choking him.

It is unclear whether Bailey saw the incident or when he left the room. Shivers said he could not recall whether the sheriff was nearby when he arrived with Richards.

A group of guards and trusties dragged Richards into the jail’s dressing room, which was known to not have cameras, and beat him, according to four former inmates familiar with the incident.

They saw Richards in the days following, and said his face was swollen and his neck was ringed with bruises.

“They did a number on him,” Reed said.

Richards declined to comment for this article, citing fears for his safety. Bailey declined a request to comment, deferring to the department’s attorney. In a statement, Dare, who called the reporting “baseless,” did not address whether Bailey was present during the incident.

The department did not produce reports detailing Richards’s capture despite repeated requests.

During email exchanges with reporters, Dedmon recounted the sheriff bragging to him and others about how Shivers had choked an inmate who had escaped.

“Bailey used to talk about it,” Dedmon wrote. “I can just remember Bailey saying, ‘Wes held him up against the wall with one hand.’”

A ‘satisfactory response’

Mississippi Today and The Times obtained formal grievance documents from lawyers who sued the department, providing a rare window into how jail officials handled inmate complaints. From 2018 to 2022, eight inmates filed grievances that described assaults by guards or trusties.

In 2022, Rives, the inmate whose jaw was broken by a guard, filed a grievance. Jail incident reports show that after Rives was struck, guards strapped him into a restraint chair overnight and then locked him in an isolation cell for 25 days. It was there where he filed his grievance, saying he had not been taken to the hospital. His jaw was infected by the time he was hospitalized and required surgery, according to medical records.

“ It never healed,” he said. “ If I take a bite out of a hamburger, it’ll lock up and pop and grind like you wouldn’t believe.”

A report from Rives’s grievance file shows that a supervisor closed his complaint three days after it had been filed, saying the department had documented the incident and provided a “satisfactory response,” which included scheduling a hospital visit for Rives and informing him that he could not press criminal charges against the guard while incarcerated.

Rives said the department did not contact him again.

The report does not indicate whether the guard who broke Rives’s jaw, Jordan McQueary, was disciplined or questioned about the incident. Rives is among at least nine inmates who have filed complaints or federal lawsuits claiming they were assaulted by McQueary, who still works at the department.

Last year, the department honored McQueary for his “outstanding” work.

He did not respond to requests for comment.

At least six other grievances were closed under similar circumstances, with no indication that the guards or trusties accused of violence were interviewed or disciplined.

Supervisors also listed “satisfactory response” as the reason for closing three other complaints. The forms do not define the term, and department representatives did not respond to requests for clarification.

Defending the trusty program

Two former trusties who spoke to Mississippi Today and The Times about their experiences said they have since been confronted by jail officials about their interviews.

John Phillips, a former trusty who said he witnessed and participated in violence between 2017 and 2021, was brought back to the Rankin County jail in August to face new criminal charges.

While there, he was taken to Vaughn’s office, where Vaughn and Dare questioned him about what he had told the publications.

Phillips then wrote and signed a statement contradicting the comments he had made to reporters. His lawyer was not present during the meeting, Phillips and Dare said.

“I never seen anything that the news reporters are talking about when spoken about inmates on inmates or the Blue Wave,” the statement reads, according to a copy provided by Dare. “There is no wrong doing at the Rankin jail or in the program.”

In a later interview, Phillips stressed that his statements to reporters had been true, and that he had felt pressured by the officials to write the letter. Dare said he had not pressured Phillips. He provided a recording of a portion of the August interaction in which Phillips says he is giving his statement voluntarily.

Dare said that he had collected similar statements from several other former trusties, but he declined to share their names.

“I sit down and try to meet with folks, figure out what they know,” he said in an interview last month. “I’m trying to defend the trusty program, that’s all.”

This story was co-reported by Steph Quinn. Jerry Mitchell, Lili Euzet and Leonardo Bevilacqua contributed reporting.

The latest results of Mississippi’s third grade reading test show no dramatic declines in student performance. But they show no significant gains, either.

Since 2021-22, the first year of student data after the pandemic, the share of students passing the assessment — including the initial test and any retest — has hovered around 85%.

The Mississippi Department of Education announced Thursday that data point holds true for the 2024-25 school year, with 85% of the state’s third graders ultimately passing the reading assessment required to graduate to the next grade, just barely higher than last year’s rate of 84%.

The new pass rate remains lower than in 2018-19, when it was 85.6%. 

It’s the latest chapter in Mississippi’s national reading success story, called a “miracle” by some but, more recently, a “marathon” by state education leaders. Over the past decade, the percentage of the state’s fourth graders scoring advanced or proficient on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — or The Nation’s Report Card — has skyrocketed, with Mississippi going from last in the nation to ninth. NAEP is separate from the state assessment.

Researchers, educators and lawmakers largely attribute that progress to the Literacy-Based Promotion Act of 2013. The law funneled money and targeted curriculum toward improving literacy outcomes, and famously established a third-grade reading test.

Students have three tries to score at least a 3 or higher on the reading portion of the state’s English Language Arts assessment to move to fourth grade. Students can score up to 5, which is considered advanced. 

The latest results show 13.9% of Mississippi third graders scored a 5, while 35.5% scored a 4 and 26.3% scored a 3. About a quarter of students did not pass the assessment.

The initial administration of the test in the spring resulted in a record pass rate of 77.3%. Students who don’t pass get another try in May, and a final attempt in June. If they’re still unsuccessful after the third attempt, they’re held back in third grade, unless they have a district-determined exemption — they have certain learning disabilities, they are learning English or they were previously retained. 

Students with disabilities who were previously retained or received two years of intensive remediation accounted for about a half of the “good cause” exemptions for 2024-25. Another third were promoted because they were tested using an alternative assessment.  

Over 2,132 third-graders, or 6%, were held back.

“Educators and teachers across Mississippi understand the importance of ensuring young students have a solid literacy foundation,” State Superintendent of Education Lance Evans said in a statement. “We also applaud every teacher, administrator, literacy coach, parent and student for their hard work in achieving literacy success.”

The state education agency said in a press release that over the past year, in an attempt to raise literacy outcomes, it provided training from literacy coaches to certain schools, expanded professional development opportunities, encouraged the usage of “high-quality instructional materials” and helped integrate Science of Reading teaching for educators-in-training.

The department said at a Senate hearing this fall that it hopes to expand the reading act into grades 4 through 8. Data show that despite the major reading gains among younger students, that success hasn’t translated into higher grades.

Mississippi will resume normal issuance of food stamps immediately, the Mississippi Department of Human Services announced Thursday. 

This development happened after the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history ended Wednesday after the House approved the Senate-passed funding package, which President Donald Trump signed into law. 

Mississippians who receive their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits between the 14th and the 21st of each month can expect to receive their full benefits as usual, the agency said in a press release. 

Those who receive their benefits between the 4th and the 13th will receive the remainder of November’s benefits “as soon as possible,” after having received partial benefits this week, according to the press release. 

December benefits will be rolled out as usual, the department said. 

“We are grateful to see MDHS working quickly to restore full benefits to all SNAP recipients for the month of November,” said Sarah Stripp, director of socioeconomic wellbeing at Springboard to Opportunities, a Jackson-based cash assistance program. “We also hope this crisis will help us all recognize how vital SNAP benefits are to the families and individuals who rely on them each month and our local economies.”

Confusion over the nation’s largest food assistance program ensued in recent weeks after more than a dozen states sued the Trump administration for its refusal to issue benefits. In past shutdowns, food assistance has continued to flow to states, but the federal government said Oct. 24 that it would not use emergency funds to pay for the program. 

About 1 in 8 Mississippians — over 350,000 people — receive food assistance through SNAP. More than 67% of participants are in households with children, and about 41% are in households with older adults or adults with a disability. In four Mississippi counties, over a third of residents rely on the program to purchase food, according to a report from WLBT. 

“It was cruel and demoralizing to watch our leaders use families’ lives and wellbeing as a bargaining chip for political gain, and we must all commit to holding our leaders accountable to not act in this way again,” Stripp said.

Marie lies awake at night, worrying about how she will afford health insurance in January. Her monthly premium is rising from $20 to $75 — a nearly fourfold increase — and she doesn’t know what she will do.

The 48-year-old from Yazoo City, who is being identified by her middle name due to privacy concerns and fear of retaliation, has chronic kidney failure, high blood pressure and fibromyalgia, a chronic condition that causes widespread body pain and fatigue. She does not work due to her health issues and the responsibility of caring for three children under the age of four. 

“I’ve got to have something, and I don’t know what I’m going to do at this moment,” Marie said. “Today, I can’t tell you what I’m going to do.”

Marie is one of hundreds of thousands of Mississippians facing increasing health insurance prices next year. Premiums for Affordable Care Act Marketplace plans are set to rise in January if Congress does not act to extend the enhanced premium tax credits that make coverage more affordable for over 22 million Americans. Consumers will pay more than double on average, according to KFF, though the rate changes will vary based on age, income and location. 

About 200,000 Mississippians are expected to drop their Marketplace coverage if the increased subsidies are not extended, Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney told Mississippi Today. It is projected to be one of the steepest drop offs in health coverage among all states. 

The Marketplace primarily insures people who do not have health coverage through their employer, Medicare or Medicaid, and about half of them are small business owners, employees, or self-employed.

For a 40-year old living alone in Jackson and making $30,000 annually, the estimated cost of monthly premiums for a silver health insurance plan would rise more than $100, from $42 to $155 per month, KFF estimates show. Such a person would still receive $483 in monthly standard federal tax credits, first made available in 2014 through the Affordable Care Act for people who make between $15,650 and $62,600. 

The enhanced subsidies were an added boost authorized by Congress in 2021 that raised the income ceiling for eligibility and allowed low-income households to access insurance without paying premiums during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As a result, the number of Mississippians enrolled in Marketplace health insurance tripled, rising by over 200,000 people between 2021 and 2025, according to enrollment data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. During the same period, the number of people without insurance – one of the highest rates in the country – dropped several percentage points.

A disagreement over extending the increased subsidies was at the heart of the 43-day federal government shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — that ended Wednesday night, with Democrats pushing for their renewal. Democratic leaders in Congress have vowed to continue fighting to extend the subsidies, and Republicans have promised to hold a vote on their extension by mid-December. 

Insurance Commissioner Chaney told Mississippi Today he believes the enhanced tax credits should be phased out, but more gently than ending suddenly at the close of the year.

“We cannot continue to give people free health care, free food, free everything and have a very small number pay for it,” he said. “People have to have some skin in the game to make the system work.”

Marie was one of the Mississippians who benefited from the new, enhanced tax credits in 2021. For the last three years, she has paid a $20 monthly premium for Marketplace insurance, making it possible for her to afford regular appointments and bloodwork to monitor her kidney condition and the costs of her medications. 

But Marie said she and her husband, who works, can’t afford the higher price tag, nor can they pay the out-of-pocket costs of her care if she turns down coverage. 

“If I don’t have my blood pressure medicine, that’s going to be bad,” she said. “I probably won’t live long.”

Experts warn that more people going without health insurance coverage could have serious consequences not only for those individuals but also for other consumers and hospitals. 

Healthy consumers who can go without coverage are the most likely to drop coverage, a shift that is likely to drive up Marketplace premiums overall, said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor and co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. As healthier enrollees leave, the remaining customer base, called the “risk pool,” will become sicker on average and more expensive to insure. 

This is already reflected in next year’s rates. Marketplace insurers told regulators they plan to raise premiums by about 4 percentage points more on average in 2026 to offset the loss of healthier customers, KFF reported. They are also raising prices to keep pace with rising medical costs.

Corlette said she expects prices to rise further in 2027 if the subsidies are not extended. 

“It takes a while for these changes to ripple through the system,” she said. 

If tens of thousands of Mississippians drop insurance coverage, hospitals will likely shoulder the costs of caring for uninsured patients when they turn to emergency rooms as a last resort, said Richard Roberson, president and CEO of the Mississippi Hospital Association. 

Mississippi’s rural hospitals will lose about $200 million in 2026 if the enhanced subsidies are not extended, according to projections from the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that studies health care access in the U.S. More than half of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are already at risk of closing, according to one recent report.

And hospitals across the state are already anticipating cuts to Medicaid payments beginning in 2029 as a result of a sweeping tax-and-spending bill signed into law by President Donald Trump this summer. Paired with rising uncompensated care costs, those reductions will strain hospitals’ bottom line, Roberson said. 

“At some point, it’s not going to be sustainable for hospitals,” he said.

The new law that reduces Medicaid funding also imposes new verification requirements for people receiving standard tax credits. This creates added red tape that produces “more friction for people,” and may drive younger, healthier people to not enroll in plans to avoid the hassle, Corlette said. 

Open enrollment for Marketplace health insurance plans began Nov. 1, giving Americans the first look at their premiums next year. The deadline to enroll in insurance to start in January is Dec. 15, 2025.

Time is running out for Congress to extend the increased subsidies, Corlette said, noting that customers could be deterred by higher prices and opt not to renew their coverage for next year, on top of the back-end system changes that would take time to implement.

“The later we get, the harder it gets,” she said. 

For consumers with a month and a half left to decide what to do about their coverage, the timeline is daunting. 

“It’s overwhelming,” said Marie, who said she plans to reach out to her health insurance plan for help and explore the possibility of Medicaid coverage as the end of the year nears. 

She is also turning to prayer. 

“I pray a lot,” Marie said. “And we are going to keep praying because that’s the way things got to be.” 

A Mississippi-based artificial intelligence startup has raised over $1 million in new funding.

Starkville-based Campusknot was co-founded by Rahul Gopal, a graduate of Mississippi State University. Its growth and evolution illustrate the possibility and support that exists in Mississippi for startups.

“Campusknot is a perfect example of what happens when the in-state ecosystem works together over time,” said Lindsey Benefield, investment director at Innovate Mississippi. “They’ve had support at every stage — from Mississippi State University and the E-Center, to Innovate Mississippi, to individual angels — all reinforcing and building momentum around a strong Mississippi founder. The progress they’re making is well-earned.”

Gopal came from India to study aerospace engineering at Mississippi State University. The initial concept for Campusknot started while he was in college, with support from the Mississippi State Center for Entrepreneurship. Over the past 10 years, Campusknot has adapted to new technologies but the core idea of enhancing student engagement in the classroom has remained.

READ MORE: Could feeding soybeans to livestock make up for tariff  trade losses?

In its current form, the platform helps professors connect better with students. It acts as an AI teaching assistant that manages assignments and student participation. 

Campusknot has been supported by Innovate Mississippi and Idea Village in Louisiana. These regional startup incubators have been “instrumental” in the company’s development, according to Gopal.

Entergy Mississippi investing over $1B into grid infrastructure

One of the projects Entergy is investing in is a natural-gas power plant in Vicksburg.

At a recent event, Entergy Vice President of Business and Economic Development Ed Gardner reiterated the company’s assertion that these projects will not place too much burden on consumers thanks to larger customers, such as the state’s burgeoning data centers.

“Your bills will be 16% lower than they were going to be because of these large customers that we’re bringing in,” said Gardner.

Joint Legislative Budget Committee adopts revised revenue outlook

A panel of Mississippi lawmakers that leads the Legislature in setting a state budget last week adopted revised revenue estimates for the current fiscal year and the coming one.

For FY 2026, which ends in June, the lawmakers revised their final estimate of state revenue downward by about 1%, or $75 million, to $7.55 billion. For fiscal year 2027, which starts in July, lawmakers on the JLBC also used a cautious estimate, banking on revenue being down to $7.532 billion.

State Economist Corey Miller gave lawmakers an update on tax revenue. He said corporate income tax collections are down slightly, sales tax revenue is up and individual income tax collections are up despite the state phasing out the tax.

The JLBC agreeing on how much money the state has to work with is an initial step for setting a state budget. The full Legislature convenes in January and will set a budget for the coming fiscal year.

Have any comments? News tips? As always, email me at  marketplace@mississippitoday.org.

Rick calls in from New York to discuss all the latest in Mississippi football, including the sixth-ranked Rebels claiming their latest victim, the Golden Eagles’ improbable run and Delta State’s opponents simply chickening out. Also, the Cleveland boys run down the 2025 Mr. Football winners and the first round of the high school playoffs.

Stream all episodes here.

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

There’s a tone many of us recognize in our bones. Not outrage. Not apathy. It’s that faded, sepia-toned feeling – the sense of standing just offstage while the rest of the country barrels past in red or blue. You care, but you don’t quite belong.

That’s where millions of Americans live. Nearly 80 million eligible adults didn’t vote in the last presidential election. These aren’t people who don’t care. Many simply don’t feel spoken for by either party or the culture at large.

What we hear again and again, here in Mississippi and beyond, is this: Most people genuinely want what’s best. They just disagree – sometimes fiercely – on what that looks like.

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre warned decades ago that our moral arguments have grown hollow because we’ve lost the shared frameworks that once gave them meaning. Words like freedom and justice still circulate, but we no longer agree on what they mean.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains why: People weigh values differently. One person hears “choice” and thinks freedom. Another hears “choice” and worries about fairness. Both are moral positions — just spoken in different languages.

You see it on the ground here. At a recent Leland City Council meeting, one group argued that a family shouldn’t live in a collapsing house without running water. Safety and liability demanded action. Another group insisted removing the family would cause deeper harm, because even a dangerous house was still shelter. Both sides were trying to do the right thing. They just couldn’t agree on what “right” looked like.

You see it at the Capitol in Jackson. The school-choice debate pits parents’ desire for options against public schools’ plea for resources. Both sides want opportunity for children. But one defines it as freedom to choose, the other as fairness in access.

And you see it in Washington, where Congress once again failed its central duty of passing a budget. For nearly half a century, lawmakers have rarely met that deadline. The American people are rightly frustrated. But underneath the dysfunction is the same issue – a translation failure between competing visions of “best.”

Have we built our fences so high – political, cultural, even literal – that we can no longer see the beauty on the other side?

Here in Mississippi, that question matters. We know how high the stakes are. One in four of our children grows up in poverty. Our ACT averages lag the nation. Yet we also know what’s possible. The “Mississippi Miracle” in early literacy showed the nation that bold investment, bipartisan policy and shared commitment can move the needle for kids.

We don’t need perfect agreement to do it again. But we do need recognition that our neighbors, even the ones we spar with, are usually trying to do the right thing. Moral humility – not certainty – may be the only way forward.

Mississippi has a chance to lead by example. That means demanding transparency and results in every school, whether public, private or charter. It means protecting both individual rights and community responsibilities. And it means refusing to let ideological corners dictate the fate of children who need every adult at the table.

We’re not enemies. We’re just holding different maps. And maybe, if we stop mistaking translation failure for moral failure, we’ll realize we’re all still steering toward what’s best.

Bio: From Chicago to New Orleans and back to the alluvial Delta soil, Lora Delhom writes, teaches and creates art shaped by the river’s flow and guided by a commitment to people and animals. She is an educator and community storyteller based in Leland. Her work reflects both a love of place and a belief in the power of words to build bridges across divides.