Jackson Free Press

It's not hard to tell that Brent Southern is a coach. Peppering his conversation with phrases like "when the whistle blows" and "read all the angles," the attorney describes the Hinds County Court position he is seeking as a coaching job—rewarding but with long hours.

A native of Monroe, La., Southern attended the University of Mississippi, where he received a bachelor's degree in education in 1983. He taught and coached football and baseball at schools in Monroe and New Albany, Miss., before heading to Mississippi College for law school. Southern received his law degree in 1988 and currently runs his own practice in Ridgeland, handling both plaintiff's and defense cases.

Southern lives in northeast Jackson and is divorced. He has two daughters, the youngest of whom plays on the Jackson Academy softball team, which he coaches. From 1998 until 2002, he served as president of the board for the Northside YMCA.

What about the Hinds County Court appeals to you?
If I'm able to have an influence in the youth court, I would love that. That is a starting point for correcting the crime problem down the road. If we can do something in the youth court, county court area, maybe we don't have as many circuit-court criminal matters as we do now, because we either scared them straight, gave them a second chance or turned them to a different path when they were 12 or 13. ...

The county court has the ability to hear any criminal matter that does not involve the death penalty. The county court could go to the circuit court and say: "You've got a backlog; I've got a case that was settled for a week. Let me take your case." One of the things that can also be a help is, as a county court judge, I can go to the circuit-court judges and say, "Let me conduct the pre-trial conferences for you." In the federal system you have a magistrate judge who handles the pretrial conferences, all of the discovery issues, so the circuit judge can be trying cases. I can do that. I know from experience that there is a lot of really wasted time in the judicial system, and it's through nobody's fault.

You were saying that you'd hope youth court would be an opportunity to prevent future crime. The skeptic would say, "What can a judge do?"
The biggest problem that I hear from people—and anybody who lives in Hinds County knows (this)—(is) you might see somebody that steals a TV or vandalizes a car get arrested. And then the next week, (you) see the same guy standing on the street, and (then) you find out he vandalized a car two weeks later. It's because it's so hard to get these cases prioritized and heard and resolved. ... In the Youth Court area, they've also carved out a drug-court exception, so that they could deal with drug crimes, because they became such a problem. Let's carve out a property-crimes section. ... Then we'll classify it into this court, and we'll fast track it.

For instance, if two or three guys decided they're going to break in and steal TVs or electronics from a business, and they got caught ... we're going to put you in the green T-shirt, and we're going to go out there and repaint that guy's storefront. Everybody's going to see them out there in that green T-shirt, and the people that are around them are going, "Hey, that was just last week, and here they are doing something." ... Now if it happens six, 10 months later, they don't respect that. But if they see something that happened on the third day of the month and by the 13th day of the month the person that just was picked up is out there sweating, then I think it's going to carry a lot more weight. ... That's what a judge can do.

What's your reason for running now?
Judge (William) Barnett (is) retiring. ... If I thought there was somebody there that was doing a poor job, I'd probably step up and run against them, but I don't think that about Judge Barnett. He's not seeking re-election. And now's the time I feel like I've got something to offer to the people of Hinds County, just like I could do it for the Northside YMCA when I was president of their board and handling all their after-school programs and sports.

Tell me more about that.
To me it was the epitome of what the YMCA stands for. We had the very well-to-do, wealthy kids playing with the single-parent, barely-making-ends-meet guys. Coming from my background, that was very appealing to me. ... I got on the board and then became president. You're supposed to serve for three years, and I stayed until my sixth year and then handed the baton off to my friend.

Is there anything else you would like to add?
I'm eager to get started. I'm not going to take the job, if elected, and then get in there and figure out what to do next. I'm ready to go now. ... Some people have asked me, "Why county court and not circuit court? Do you have aspirations of going (on to circuit court)?" No, not really. When I took the softball job, it wasn't with the aspiration of being the baseball coach or the head football coach. ... It's amazing the influence and the impact that you can have on kids. County court is going to give me that chance.