''Kentucky Justice'' was a

reality television Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early ...

series which followed the activities and exploits of the Harlan County

Sheriff's department In the United States, a sheriff is an official in a county or independent city responsible for keeping the peace and enforcing the law. Unlike most officials in law enforcement in the United States, sheriffs are usually elected, although ...

, in eastern

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

, from 2013 to 2014. The series was produced by the National Geographic Channel and aired for a single season.

Theme

Harlan County, which is one of the poorest counties in America, was selected for the show due to an epidemic wave of crime, mostly involving drug abuse. The series followed the officers of the Harlan County Sheriff's Department as they attempted to battle rural crime. Unlike other police reality series, such as '' Cops'', the series departed from the classic theme of mixing "fast paced" arrests with slower investigations, and instead focused primarily on following a days or weeks long single investigation, mostly involving the Sheriff personally investigating the case. Shows would also focus on the personal lives of the deputies, in particular young and inexperienced police officers, recently graduated from the

police academy A police academy, also known as a law enforcement training center, police college, or police university, is a training school for police cadets, designed to prepare them for the law enforcement agency they will be joining upon graduation, or othe ...

, as they learned through mistakes and underwent professional growth. Some programs would intermix multiple investigations, usually short segments of arrests and pursuing suspects, cut in with a single longer segment regarding a more serious investigation. On one show, cameras captured a chaotic shooting during a drug raid where a suspect inside a house fired twelve rounds at deputies with one deputy returning fire. The suspect was unharmed and the deputy cleared of wrongdoing after an investigation.

Episodes

Cancellation

''Kentucky Justice'' was cancelled after one season due to the arrest and indictment of Sheriff Marvin J. Lipfird on felony charges of embezzlement of county funds. Lipfird was accused, and later pleaded guilty, to stealing more than ten thousand dollars from a county bank account set up to finance drug related investigations to include the paying of informants as well as providing "buy money" for

undercover To go "undercover" (that is, to go on an undercover operation) is to avoid detection by the object of one's observation, and especially to disguise one's own identity (or use an assumed identity) for the purposes of gaining the trust of an ind ...

drug operations."Former Harlan County sheriff pleads guilty to misappropriating public money"
WYMT News (8 June 2017) Lipfird's actions were exposed during a state audit and, following his arrest, the series ''Kentucky Justice'' was cancelled. The series was then rebooted as '' Southern Justice''.

External links

Kentucky Justice on NGC
* https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3408862

References

{{reflist Documentary television series about policing Television shows filmed in Kentucky Harlan County, Kentucky Law enforcement in Kentucky