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    Mississippi Sheriff to be Investigated by State Auditor

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    In Mississippi, a sheriff accused of staffing his family’s commercial chicken farm with inmates defended the practice, saying he always paid them.The Mississippi State Auditor’s office on Friday said it had launched an investigation into allegations that Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey had staffed his mother’s commercial chicken farm with jail inmates who were in his custody.The investigation follows an article published Thursday by Mississippi Today and The New York Times in which former inmates and a former deputy described working on the farm and using equipment and supplies bought with taxpayer money.“We’re all aware of the reporting,” said Jacob Walters, communications director for State Auditor Shad White. “We read the article, and Auditor White has ordered an investigation to begin yesterday morning, when we became aware of the story.”Mr. White’s office can investigate potential misuse of government resources and file lawsuits to recoup taxpayer money. It does not have the authority to file criminal charges, but Mr. Walters said the office had alerted federal prosecutors to the allegations.Sheriff Bailey did not respond on Friday to requests for comment.In a statement issued late Thursday to some local media outlets, officials at the sheriff’s department acknowledged that Sheriff Bailey had sent inmates from the Rankin County jail to work at his mother’s farm, but said the inmates were always paid.Mississippi State Auditor Shad White speaking at the Neshoba County Fair in 2022.Vickie D. King/Mississippi TodayWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      $3.5 Million Settlement in Sacramento Jail Death

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      The fatal overdose of a homeless man at a Sacramento County jail is one of multiple deaths in which staff have been accused of medical neglect.The family of a man who died from an overdose in a Sacramento County jail after being left unattended for hours have agreed to a $3.5 million settlement.That man, David Kent Barefield Sr., 55, was dragged across a garage into the jail last May, not given a medical exam despite being visibly ill, handcuffed in a cart while awaiting booking and only offered medical aid in his final minutes, jail footage shows.Mr. Barefield’s relatives described the neglect in a civil case filed last December against the county’s Sheriff’s Office, its health department and the City of Sacramento police. The settlement was confirmed by the family’s lawyer and by a county spokeswoman; a copy of the document shows it was signed on March 5. The case with the city is still pending.The Sheriff’s Office investigated Mr. Barefield’s death and found that none of its employees violated any law or policy, according to a redacted report that was released to The New York Times and The Desert Sun on Thursday.Mr. Barefield being dragged inside the jail, as captured in surveillance footage.via Sacramento Sheriff Legal AffairsThe details of Mr. Barefield’s last hours are captured in surveillance and body camera video obtained by The Times and The Sun through a records request. The organizations previously reported some of that information, citing accounts from lawyers and medical experts who investigated the death and six others in the county’s jails last year as part of a federal court monitoring program. The court had appointed those monitors in a class-action lawsuit related to broader complaints about medical care in the facilities.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sacramento County Jail Death Leads to Accusations of Neglect

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      Court-appointed monitors of Sacramento County jails say a man’s fatal overdose was one of multiple deaths in which deputies and nurses exhibited a “callous” indifference toward detainees.A Sacramento man suffering from a drug overdose was neglected by a police officer, medical workers and sheriff’s deputies over the course of more than two hours before he died at a county jail last May, according to reports from court-appointed monitors.That man, David Kent Barefield Sr., 55, was among seven detainees the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office reported dying at its facilities last year — and one of three who died at its main jail in the span of about a month.Jail staff members claimed he was faking illness, and the Sheriff’s Office told the California Department of Justice that his death was from natural causes. But an autopsy by the county Coroner’s Office found he had overdosed on methamphetamine and fentanyl.Like many jails and prisons across the country, those in Sacramento County have been faulted for inadequate medical care in recent years. Details of Mr. Barefield’s last hours were captured on jail video footage, which has not been publicly released but was viewed by lawyers appointed to monitor conditions at the county jails as part of a 2020 consent decree in a federal lawsuit.The lawyers’ report described a culture of neglect for detainees in the jail system. Two medical experts, also assigned to track compliance with court-ordered reforms, asserted that there was misconduct by police officers, sheriff’s deputies and jail medical personnel in handling Mr. Barefield and others who died.“Review of these deaths showed serious system and individual performance issues, including inadequate emergency response, inadequate medical care prior to death, and in one case, callous deliberate indifference to a man who was so obviously gravely ill that even a lay person would see that the patient needed emergent care,” the medical experts wrote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Unnecessary Suffering of Women With Obstetric Fistulas

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      One of the most dangerous things a woman can do in much of the world is become pregnant, and the risks caught up with a Kenyan named Alice Wanjiru a decade ago.Then 20 years old and pregnant for the first time, she suffered a childbirth injury called an obstetric fistula, caused by prolonged labor without access to a C-section to end it. This left her with a hole in the tissue between her rectum and her vagina, and for 10 years she endured the humiliation of continually leaking stool through her genital tract.“I could never get fully clean, for there was always some stool left,” she told me. “The other women would say, ‘She is the woman who stinks.’ I would ask God, ‘Why me? Why can’t I be like other women?’”Wanjiru bathed herself several times a day, fasted from morning until evening so there wouldn’t be much in her digestive tract during the day, and always wore a sanitary pad. Doctors misdiagnosed her, sex was a nightmare and her husband abandoned her after harshly accusing her of having poor hygiene.Shamed by the continuous odor, she withdrew from friends and stayed home from church and other gatherings. She endured her shame in solitude, year after year.Perhaps one million or two million women worldwide are enduring fistulas and leak stool or, more commonly, urine through their vaginas. These are typically impoverished women in poor countries where home births are the norm, who couldn’t get to a doctor in time for a needed C-section.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Breaking the Cycle of Childhood Poverty in New York

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      This is part of an Opinion series on The New York Times Communities Fund, which assists nonprofits that provide direct support to people and communities facing hardship. Donate to the fund here. .g-goldbergseriesinfo a { text-decoration: underline; color: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 2px; } .g-goldbergseriesinfo{ position: relative; display: flex; overflow: hidden; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 1.125rem […] More

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      Books About Everyone, for Everyone

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      This is part of an Opinion series on The New York Times Communities Fund, which assists nonprofits that provide direct support to people and communities facing hardship. Donate to the fund here. .g-goldbergseriesinfo a { text-decoration: underline; color: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-underline-offset: 2px; } .g-goldbergseriesinfo{ position: relative; display: flex; overflow: hidden; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 1.125rem […] More

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      Donate This Holiday Season: Women and Children Need Your Help

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      This column is part of Times Opinion’s 2024 Giving Guide. Read more about the guide in a note from Times Opinion’s editor, Kathleen Kingsbury.Forget the necktie that will sit in Dad’s closet or the perfume that your sister Sue will soon regift, for I have some better ideas.This is my annual holiday giving guide, and I think you’ll like the charities I recommend this year — and so will Dad and Sue if you contribute in their names. You can donate and find out more information through my Kristof Holiday Impact Prize website, KristofImpact.org, which I’ve used for the past six years to support nonprofits in my giving guide.Here’s what your contributions can accomplish this year:Give a woman her life back! One of the most heartbreaking conditions I’ve reported on is obstetric fistula, a childbirth injury that happens in poor countries when a woman endures many hours of obstructed labor and no doctor is available to perform a C-section. The baby usually dies, and the woman is left with injuries affecting the vaginal wall and the bladder or rectum, so she continuously leaks bodily waste.These women — sometimes just teenage girls — can feel stigmatized and humiliated, even that they have been cursed by God.The good news is that together we can help them reclaim their lives, with a corrective surgery that costs just $619 per person. A nonprofit called the Fistula Foundation has financed more than 100,000 surgeries through a network of more than 150 hospitals in more than 30 countries. Yet need remains enormous.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Donate This Holiday Season: Charities That Need Your Help

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      Sebastian KönigThis article also appears in the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning and on Saturdays.I’m excited to announce the return of Times Opinion’s annual giving guide. Over the course of the next two weeks you will find recommendations from our columnists and writers for nonprofits that deserve your attention as 2024 comes to a close. Each year that we have undertaken the guide, I’ve been impressed with our readers’ generosity, and I hope you will consider donating again this holiday season.Today, the columnist Nicholas Kristof kicks things off, suggesting several organizations around the globe that positively affect change. “If you’re feeling dispirited by national or global events,” he writes, “remember the adage that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Nick has been Opinion’s guiding light when it comes to raising money for worthy causes, and this year his list offers many good options.One of my favorite parts of this tradition is offering you some of my own suggestions: I’d be remiss not to start with The New York Times Communities Fund. The campaign, started by the paper more than a century ago, this year supports nine organizations focused on feeding families, offering educational opportunities and much more. You will hear more about their work from me and our editorial board over the next several weeks, but please consider giving to the Communities Fund.I’ve spent the weeks since the election thinking a lot about the future of education in the United States, as the president-elect and his allies have pledged to rethink the federal Department of Education and its mission. One model that I’ve been impressed with is the Cristo Rey Network. Its Catholic high schools across the country give students a curriculum that helps prepare them for college while also placing them at professional jobs once a week during the school year. Students, on average, come from families of four making $38,000 a year or less.What impresses me is that Cristo Rey’s approach offers students multiple pathways coming out of high school, giving them true choice combined with hands-on work experience. I’m most familiar with and have supported the Cristo Rey campus in Milwaukee, which has proved transformational to its community, but you’ll likely find one of the network’s 40 schools nearby if you are interested in supporting its efforts.There are few things that can bring joy like helping those in need. Wishing you all that satisfaction in abundance this year.This article is part of Times Opinion’s Giving Guide 2024. If you are interested in any organization mentioned in Times Opinion’s Giving Guide 2024, please go directly to its website. Neither the authors nor The Times will be able to address queries about the groups or facilitate donations. More

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      Vote to End the Trump Era

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      Opinion | The Editorial Board You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. […] More