Michelle Liu and Anna Wolfe, two reporters, discovered that hundreds of people were in similar circumstances due to the state’s lesser-known restitution centre program. We discovered that Mississippi had a modern-day debtors’ prison. We met inmates and their employers throughout Mississippi. Our journey began at Jackson’s fast-food restaurants and continued to the Mississippi Delta, and the Gulf Coast. We used court documents and a list containing work-camp inmates, which the corrections department later removed. We interviewed over 50 former and current restitution center inmates, as well as a dozen national experts. 30 public records requests were filed. We used more than 200 sentencing order numbers to create a database that detailed how judges placed people in the centers and the amount they had to pay. Andrew R. Calderon, from The Marshall Project, helped us analyze that data and other state data. The Mississippi Department of Corrections provided us with population reports. These reports showed the population of each Mississippi restitution center at each month’s beginning. These reports include information such as the average number and absconding inmates per month. Although the corrections department and most of the judges we spoke to refused interviews, we used hundreds of pages of court documents and hearing transcripts as well as policy manuals to verify the stories of the inmates. This investigation was published in partnership by The Marshall Project, an independent news organization that covers the U.S. criminal justice systems. Follow The Marshall Project on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for their newsletter. To support this work, make a regular donation to The Marshall Project today as we celebrate our Spring Member Drive. This will allow us to continue important work such as this one.