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.
I think you may have only met some extraordinarily harmful people or you have read too much of the Internet. Go meet a super strict conservative at the table. Shit, go out and make friendly conversation with a white supremacist. People can have awful beliefs for soooo many reasons but they’re still people with all the feelings you keep trying to deny them.
The phobias you mentioned aren’t really about empathy to begin with - a decade ago, they were about fear. Hence the name. And you haven’t admitted to your false claim of me blaming victims.
Quit demonizing swaths of people based on gross generalizations, dude. You’re adding to the bullshit that hurts us all.
Buddy, many of us are literally related to these people. You know nothing about the person you replied to.
You’re bending over backwards to defend conservatives while trying to pretend it’s not specifically about defending conservatives. Which is obviously what you’re doing.