In a Mississippi Jail, Inmates Became Weapons

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

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4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Chris Mack has been locked up in Mississippi’s Rankin County Jail on and off since he was a teenager. In a lawsuit, he detailed a jailhouse assault that left him with broken ribs, a broken nose, and two black eyes. But it wasn’t just guards who attacked him. Mack said a group of inmates joined in—men in the jail’s Trusty Inmate Program, who had special privileges and wore blue jumpsuits.

“They were called the blue wave,” Mack said.

Through more than 70 interviews with former inmates and officers, reporters from Mississippi Today and the New York Times discovered a system in which guards ordered beatings, inmates who participated were rewarded, and those trying to raise an alarm about the system for more than a decade were ignored.

This week on Reveal, on the heels of our reporting on abuses in the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department run by Sheriff Bryan Bailey, we expose a wave of violence in his county jail.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal.
0:04.5	I'm Al Letton.
0:05.5	Well, good morning.
0:06.5	How are y'all eating today?
0:08.5	Good? Okay.
0:09.5	Looks like we have about 100 people here, so good turnout.
0:13.0	It's a Saturday morning in Rankin County, Mississippi, a suburban community just outside the state capital, and a prayer breakfast is about to begin.
0:22.0	All right, dear Lord, we love Rankin County. That's why we're here, God. We pray blessings on all
0:27.2	the officials here that have to make hard decisions, dear Lord. People are sitting around tables,
0:32.7	drinking coffee and grabbing food from the buffet. Many of them are local business leaders and politicians
0:38.8	here to mingle. And every month, this prayer breakfast is co-hosted by the local sheriff, Brian Bailey.
0:45.5	So, y'all know what I want to do. If you're an elected official, I want you to stand up,
0:50.0	please, right now. All left to the officials. Uh-huh. At this breakfast in May, a recent
0:57.5	scandal was on everyone's minds. Bailey's department was under intense scrutiny. Two black
1:04.2	men were tortured in their home by a group of Rankin County deputies who called themselves
1:09.6	the goon squad. A deputy shot one of the
1:12.7	men in the mouth during a mock execution, and the officers planted drugs and a gun to cover up
1:18.5	their crimes. The deputies have been convicted, and the men sued the Rankin County Sheriff's
1:24.5	Department seeking $400 million.
1:28.3	But just days earlier, the county settled for $2.5 million.
1:32.3	County supervisor Steve Gaines takes the mic and says the quiet part out loud,
1:38.3	heaping praise on the department's attorney.
	...

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