Country Star Jelly Roll Officially Sworn In as Deputy Sheriff in Flint, Michigan

Jelly Roll attends CRS2024 at the Omni Nashville Hotel in Nashville, Tenn., on Feb. 28, 2024. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images)

Rapper-turned-country singer Jelly Roll, whose teenage years and early 20s were marred by numerous jail stints and felony convictions, is living proof that second chances are possible after being sworn in as a deputy sheriff over the weekend.

On July 27, Genesee County Sheriff Christopher Swanson surprised the 39-year-old, whose legal name is Jason Bradley DeFord, with an official sheriff’s identification card and badge during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new music studio at the Genesee County Jail in Flint, Michigan.

A video of the event was shared on the Instagram account of 99.5 WYCD, a radio station in Detroit.

“From convict to deputy,” Jelly Roll said in the clip before raising his right hand to be deputized.

“This is the real deal,” Swanson said after swearing in the “Son of a Sinner” singer as a deputy with the Community Cares Task Force, an initiative Swanson started in March 2020 to help Genesee County residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You walk into any facility now, you can tell them you’re a deputy sheriff from Genesee County,” he said. “That’s second chances.”

Jailhouse Music Studio

Jelly Roll, who grew up in Antioch, a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, has previously partnered with Swanson to support the Genesee County Sheriff’s Office’s I.G.N.I.T.E. Program—an acronym for “inmate growth naturally and intentionally through education.”

Founded by Swanson in 2020, the initiative works to “reverse the cycle of generational incarceration through education,” per the educational program’s website.

“By providing inmates with valuable job training, they are equipped with skills they can use upon release to gain meaningful employment and reduce their likelihood of reoffending,” the website reads. “Educational programs have also been found to reduce generational incarceration by offering inmates a way to break out of the cycle perpetuated by previous generations.”

The Jelly Roll Jailhouse Music Studio, created in partnership with the Flint Institute of Music, is one of Swanson’s latest efforts to rehabilitate inmates.

“I never thought I'd say that it feels good to be back in jail but it does,” Jelly Roll said in a clip shared by 99.5 WYCD.

“I believe that art expresses sometimes often what we can’t see,” the singer shared, adding that he believed a hit song would be written in the Genesee County Jail’s new studio.

“But what’s more special than somebody writing a hit song out of this jail is that I believe people will pour pain into this room, right here, that they’ve been holding their entire life—that they will let go of generational curses and trauma that has been keeping them down,” he continued. “And I believe whether they write a hit song or not people will leave this room better [expletive] people.”

Jelly Roll Studios

The Genesee County Jail’s new rehabilitation program isn’t the first music studio the award-winning country music artist has opened in an incarceration facility.

Earlier this year, Jelly Roll launched a music studio at the Davidson County Juvenile Detention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, where he served about three and a half years as a teen.

The singer donated proceeds from his sold-out concert at the Nashville Bridgestone Arena in December 2022 to help bring Jelly Roll Studios to life. The project was completed in partnership with the Nashville-based nonprofit The Beat of Life, which provides incarcerated and vulnerable populations access to songwriting and music workshops through its Redemption Songs Program.

“I never would have dreamed when I was sitting right there that I would one day come back and introduce a studio and partner with The Beat of Life,” Jelly Roll said at the studio’s opening event on Feb. 19.

Jelly Roll has previously been forthcoming about his struggles with mental health and addiction as well as his various criminal offenses, including aggravated robbery and drug possession. While speaking at the opening event for Jelly Roll Studios, the former rapper reflected on the time he spent incarcerated at the Nashville juvenile detention center, where he was jailed at age 14 following his first arrest.

“When I was in juvenile, we never got a visitor. We never had a mentor, nobody ever came to see us,” he offered. “To be able to come back on these terms is a dream that I had and this is only the beginning.”