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This story originally appeared in the Jackson Free Press. It was added to the Mississippi Free Press website in 2025.
Note that any opinions expressed in legacy Jackson Free Press stories do not reflect a position of the Mississippi Free Press or necessarily of its staff and board members.

With a community discussion about crime—and how exactly you fight it, not just whine about it—finally getting underway, the Jackson Free Press is presenting a Crime Blog for people who love Jackson. That is, this a blog about crime prevention, as well as punishment, and it is provided both as way to promote thought and conversation (and, thus, solutions), as well as a place for people to warn others about actual crime trends and occurrences (through the JFP Crime Forum). We also plan to release any and all crime statistics through the site, as soon as the city begins complying with the law and public-records requests. We believe strongly that if the city is not going to tell us where the crime trends are, that the people must do it ourselves.

What this blog is not is a place for mere Jackson-bashing, and we know it when we see it (usually on The Clarion-Ledger’s letters page). So if that is your goal, move on elsewhere.

We will not sensationalize crime here, or use it as a political weapon. Instead, we invite readers to come together to help each other and try to solve problems that are leading to crime in Jackson. We do not believe crime is the No. 1 issue, although it may well be the No. 1 symptom of deeper problems we must all address together.

Please participate in this forum in a respectful way, offering potential solutions and dialogues about how we can best reduce and prevent crime in the city of Jackson. We welcome your input.

Previous Comments

A bump to let everyone know that the Jackson Free Press Crime Blog is officially live. The JFP Crime Forum, for your posts, will be online shortly. You’re welcome. 😉


This is the best thing yet! Thanks!


Earlier this month, my sister’s home was burglarized on a Sunday morning while she and her kids were at church. She lives off McDowell Road, about a block from Marshall Elementary. The ransacked her house and took all the DVDs, TVs, VCR/DVD combos, my 13-year-old nephew’s Xbox and video games, and my 7-year-old niece’s change jar. They even took her comforter so they could haul off all that stuff. Fortunately, she did call the police, and the locks have been changed, etc.


Oops, I should have posted this in the Crime Forum. Going there now…

Founding Editor Donna Ladd is a writer, journalist and editor from Philadelphia, Miss., a graduate of Mississippi State University and later the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she was an alumni award recipient in 2021. She writes about racism/whiteness, poverty, gender, violence, journalism and the criminal justice system. She contributes long-form features and essays to The Guardian when she has time, and was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press. She co-founded the statewide nonprofit Mississippi Free Press with Kimberly Griffin in March 2020, and the Mississippi Business Journal named her one of the state's top CEOs in 2024. Read more at donnaladd.com, follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @donnerkay and email her at donna@mississippifreepress.org.