James Tatsch was not charged with any crime. But when he was found unresponsive in an isolation cell at the Alcorn County Jail on Jan. 17, he had been locked up for 12 days. He died at the local hospital.
Tatsch was waiting for mental health treatment through Mississippi’s involuntary commitment process. Every year, hundreds of people going through the process are detained in county jails for days or weeks at a time while they wait for evaluations, hearings and treatment. They are generally treated like criminal defendants and receive little or no mental health care while jailed.
Mississippi Today and ProPublica previously reported that since 2006, at least 14 people have died after being jailed during this process. Tatsch, who was 48 years old, is at least the 15th. No one in the state keeps track of how often people die while jailed for this reason. The news organizations identified the deaths through lawsuits, news clips and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation reports. MBI investigates in-custody deaths only at the request of the local sheriff or district attorney.
We need to start putting the death penalty on the table for criminally negligent officers.
The death penalty isn’t justifiable for any reason, much less this. Lock up the negligent officers and give them the same treatment they give their prisoners, shown them what it’s like to be abused.
Isn’t that the death penalty as well?
No. I meant everything except for the killing part, obviously.
It’s justifiable for pedophiles.
No. They need to serve their time, and wrongful convictions do happen. State-sponsored murder of prisoners is not okay.
So now we defend pedophiles on lemmy?
What a place to be.
So now we make strawmen and put words into other people’s mouths to win imaginary arguments on Lemmy? What a place to be indeed.
Honestly, that kinda thing is more common on Lemmy than it was on Reddit in my experience. Don’t run into many bad actors here, but when you do it’s someone who either purposely ignores what was said, or have absolutely no reading comprehension skills.
That’s literally what he did.
No it’s definitely not. Work on your reading comprehension and try again.
Lol, now you’re just going through all my comments and replying to me?
Sad fellow.