Rankin Sheriff, KLLM donate ‘Life-Changing Rig’ for MDOC Re-Entry Program

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The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department has teamed with KLLM trucking company to provide a tractor-trailer rig to the Mississippi Department of Corrections to train inmates to become commercial drivers upon their release.

Sheriff Bryan Bailey said he obtained the idea to donate the truck when he heard Commissioner Burl Cain speak about the MDOC’s commercial driver’s program. His deputies had seized the 2009 International Pro-Star rig on I-20. Mexican drug cartels were using a secret compartment in the truck to transport drugs.

“God laid it on my heart” to offer the donation, Sheriff Bailey said. The Rankin County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved it.

Commissioner Cain had secured the funds for driving simulators but lacked a tractor-trailer rig for hands-on training. He was elated to hear of the truck donation. All that was needed was a trailer for the truck to pull and that is where KLLM came into the picture.

Sheriff Bailey contacted Jim Richards of KLLM Transport Services and Richards immediately agreed to donate a trailer.

Sheriff Bailey, Commissioner Cain, and Richards, CEO of KLLM, met on Thursday, June 30, at KLLM headquarters in Richland for the donation. MAGCOR CEO Bradley Lum, the incoming MDOC deputy commissioner in charge of workforce development, also was present.

“It doesn’t seem like much, but it is a life-changing rig,” said Sheriff Bailey. “It can affect hundreds of lives by helping these men and women get commercial driver’s licenses.”

Richards said the partnership between business and law enforcement is important in helping to reduce incarceration.

The donation is “a way that business can interact with law enforcement to try to change people’s lives,” Richards said. “This thing will go a lot further by changing lives, keeping them out of prison. If we can continue helping people learn a skill, get them productive, get them support in their families, then whatever little piece we can play, we’d love to do that.”

Commissioner Cain praised the company for its contribution to helping inmates. The tractor-trailer rig will be put into use initially at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, he said.

“They just gave us a school,'” Commissioner Cain said. “We’re going to have inmates employable, fewer victims of violent crime; they will have jobs when they get out of prison all because of these two gentlemen (Sheriff Bailey and Richards). They’re giving this to us, to the state of Mississippi to have a school to help prisoners. That’s incredible. That’s amazing.”

Successful re-entry of inmates through gainful employment is a priority for the department, backed by the Legislature in recent years.

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