In 2017, Amber Jones went to the Clay County, Mississippi jail for violating her probation. While she was incarcerated, Sheriff Eddie Scott, who runs the jail, offered her a position as a trustee working for an administrator. Trustee jobs grant privileges, like access to the outside and better conditions. The sheriff then used his position of power to coerce Jones into sex in exchange for visits home. He continued the abuse when she left jail, asking her for nude photos and texting.
This is part of a pattern for Scott. An investigation by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today found “that during his 11 years in office, Sheriff Scott has repeatedly been accused of using the power of his position to harass women, coerce them into sex and retaliate against those who criticize him or allege abuse.”
Stories about law enforcement misconduct often grossly undervalue the experience of the victims. While police and prosecutors claim they represent the “victims,” when it comes to people who are killed, raped, kidnapped, imprisoned, starved, and tortured by law enforcement, there’s silence.
I have written before about how difficult it is to hold sheriffs accountable for misconduct. But even under the best of circumstances, the remedies are limited: Either to remove the sheriff from office – through election or recall – or some form of official investigation by the state or federal government that might end in removing the sheriff from office or, in the rarest cases, incarceration.
Even if everyone does their best – a generally laughable proposition – all these are extremely limited remedies that fail to address the fundamental problem: the system that allows these sheriffs power and that denigrates the people who are the most deserving of protection.
Eddie Scott is running for re-election. He should not be allowed to have that office. The Department of Justice should investigate him. But more importantly, his victims deserve justice.
What does that look like? Well, the New York Times story provides a hint in the lead anecdote, in which Scott promises a woman he will “use his influence in their rural community to keep her out of prison” in exchange for sex. In a later appeal, the victim submitted evidence and asked the judge to overturn her sentence:
She laid out her allegations in state circuit court in October 2012 and asked a judge to overturn her prison sentence. To back up her story, the 26-year-old showed suggestive letters with a return address of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office and signed by then-Chief Deputy Scott, who was 47.
“Hey Sexy,” he wrote to her in prison nine months before his election to the top job. “Got my blood pumping hard after reading the last two letters. Can’t stop thinking of how tight it is. I want all of that and more if you can.”
It is reasonable – and the minimum required – that she should get her freedom from state violence in exchange for suffering an excessive amount of state violence. But she did not. The judge ruled against her.
For Amber Jones, the harassment continues. After the story was published, Scott issued a vigorous denial despite pages of texts so graphic the newspaper couldn’t publish them. Jones’s friends have set up a Go Fund Me to support her. The election is Tuesday, August 8.
The system imposes such suffering and allows for such grotesque abuses that the best remedy – indeed, the only real remedy – is to tear it