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.
“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.
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.”“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 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.
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.
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.”