Mississippi Sheriff Used Inmate Labor for Family Farm

U.S.|‘You’re His Property’: How One Sheriff Used Inmate Labor on His Family Farm

Bryan Bailey, the Mississippi sheriff whose department had been under federal investigation for torturing people, staffed his mother’s commercial chicken farm with inmates from the county jail and used taxpayer-purchased equipment to improve the grounds, according to four former inmates and a former deputy who said they had worked on the farm.

They said inmates with special privileges, known as trusties, were repeatedly driven to the farm — sometimes by Sheriff Bailey himself — to perform various tasks on top of their daily work duties for Rankin County.

Former trusties and others who worked on Sheriff Bailey’s family farm said inmates had received cash or meals in exchange for the work. The former deputy, Christian Dedmon, who is currently serving a federal prison sentence, said he had worked on the farm while he was on the clock at the sheriff’s department.

Over six months, reporters for Mississippi Today interviewed several former Rankin County sheriff’s deputies and 20 former trusties. The trusties who said they had worked on the farm asked that their names not be used because they feared retribution. The reporters also reviewed more than 1,000 pages of county financial records, as well as text messages Mr. Dedmon sent while working on the farm.

The reporting revealed that for most of his 13 years in office, Sheriff Bailey used his position as the highest paid and most powerful public figure in his suburban county in ways that financially benefited himself and his family. Through his department’s attorney, Sheriff Bailey declined to comment for this article.

For years, people familiar with the sheriff’s activities kept quiet, out of a sense of loyalty or because they feared crossing a popular sheriff with political connections across Mississippi.