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.
Conservatives are not able to see others as humans. Empathy is simply not a conservative trait. As such, conservatives should never be considered appropriate choices for leadership positions. The result is always oppression and death. Always. This has been true throughout human history.
These innocent people were killed by conservatives just being conservatives.
Conservatives are driven by fear. It’s hard to show empathy when you see others as a constant threat.
“We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala”
Fucking phrenology.
Literally the opposite but go on…
And as we all know, liberalism and conservatism are the only forms of politics.
“I refuse to understand that in the political mainstream of American shorthand liberal generally refers to the center and left of the political spectrum as Republicans have made themselves such a massive threat to democracy that Progressives, Centrists, and Leftists (actual leftists, not the white highschool and college kid bougeyviks who see everyone else as expendable if it means anyone to the right of Pol Pot are made to surrender to the intellectual superiority in which they remain ever euphoric) are forced to share the same political apparatus for risk of the spoiler effect.”
It absolutely fucking doesn’t refer to the left lol
It does in America. Any suggestions it doesn’t are predicated on “bErNiE wOuLd Be A cEnTrIsT iN hUnGaRy!” type idiocy, or on the fact that Europeans use it to refer to what Americans call libertarian.
Either way, it’s based on Eurocentrism.
Liberals in America are just right wing anti-communists, they’re not leftists at all. As for Bernie, social-democracy is the moderate wing of fascism and that’s why he supports Biden’s genocide.
“Social Democracy is the moderate wing of fascism.”
Pure bougeyvik nonse. Quite literally too, the line originates with the Bolsheviks because nordic socialist parties split with the internationale on letting Stalin boss everyone around.
You’re parroting anti-leftist talking points spawned out of a temper tantrum thrown by the guy who got caught with his pants down in WWII because he still thought he was negotiating with the axis to join in exchange for Bulgaria and Turkey.
I’d ask how it feels to be a useful idiot but the .ml lets us all know that you think the one college class you took for your minor in “read theory” makes you smarter than everyone else, particularly that working class you claim to be an ally with while actively talking over them about what their interests are.
social-democracy is the moderate wing of fascism
Lol. I guess if your goal is to muddy the waters and confuse people about the definitions of words, then well done.
They are? What a strange thing to say.
That’s how the study measures politics, I’m just making fun of it.
A problem never exists until it happens to them personally. And even that’s a stretch.
Conservatives are not able to see others as humans.
I’m not so sure. In fact, I don’t think they would enjoy being so cruel if they didn’t think they were doing it to other humans.
They just see most humans as lesser humans.
Interesting angle. I can see that being accurate.
Calvinism tells you/shows you everything.
Calvinism started with what sounds like reasonable religious philosophy. If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, then God surely knows the end of history and whose souls will be saved and whose won’t be saved.
The original notion was closer to a piece of philosophy produced by preists who studied the Bible extensively, who likely assumed that as mere humans, they could not know the mind of God.
When this philosophy was passed to the commoner, however, the commoners decided it meant they could tell who was going to hell and who wasn’t, since it was already pre-determined, right?
At no point did anyone stop and yell “Blaspheme! It is blaspheme to claim to know the mind of God, a thing that is unknowable!” No, people just decided they could figure out who was going to hell and fuck what God thinks anyway.
It’s the same thing, it really comes down to something as simple as tribalism. They want a protected in-group but they also need an out-group to attack. It’s helpful to have a vague and nebulous enemy so any time someone wrongs you, you can instantly accuse them of being part of the shadow groups out to get you. It really prevents you from ever having to think about your own behavior much or at all, and focuses everything on a shadowy group or figure (Satan!) that they cannot even prove is there.
Is it any wonder most of these people are religious, specifically Christian, already? It’s like this kind of shit is baked into the religion.
It’s pretty well baked into 2/4 of the Abrahamic religions. I don’t know how Judaism is actually practiced well enough to claim that it’s baked into Judaism.
It’s not that empathy isn’t a conservative trait, the range is the issue.
You can see it in how all the “pro gay” and “pro stem cell” conservatives in the US are ones who had a family member come out as queer or who contracted an illness which could be treated via stem cells.
It’s like they never quite got object permanence down pat. They can only believe queer folks are people if they see one themselves, they can only understand a moral abortion when they or one of their family members needs one, they only believe in welfare when its coming to their community, because they know that their community ain’t mis-usin’ it.
Obviously some of it is down to just plain ol’ bigotry, but a lot of it comes from the fact that these people can’t empathize with what they haven’t ever seen in person.
It’s like the mirror test but for screens, liberals, progressives, and leftists are able to recognize through a screen that the person on the other side is a real person with a real life experience that can really be related to even if only a little bit. A conservative in the modern day is someone who’s just incapable of that, or even worse, someone who is capable of it but has opportunistically chosen to ignore it.
A proper rural political campaign has to bring these issues to these folks front and center, you’re not gonna make progress in small town America unless you campaign on the theory of EXTREMELY visual learning, you need black historians telling the story of Tulsa at town hall meetings, you need queer rights advocates telling the story about how their parents disowned them for being queer, you need folks who have had abortions and people who never would but understand that it isn’t their place to stop others to explain their experiences and journeys.
Most importantly you need to pay these folks a kings ransom because every single one of them is gonna need to be equipped with the patience of fucking Solomon to bring these issues to where conservatives will be able to see it and really have a chance to empathize with, and that’s gonna involve a lot of answering very stupid and insensitive questions, and also dealing with people looking for a fight so they can keep villainizing over everyone else who might be able to get their grok on for these people.
I’ve been detained and unlawfully searched dozens of times but the worst offenders are cops in major cities. 95% of my terrible cop experiences were in Democrat run cities. Authoritarianism runs strong on the left.
Authoritarianism is a notoriously conservative trait. It is not a trait of progressives. I think you know that and are engaging in bad faith with a suspicious personal anecdote.
Right authoritarianism is fascism, that’s the definition. But left authoritarianism is a very, very real thing. And many people who claim to be libertarian leftists still want authorities to enforce their ideals. Back when I used to shitpost on Reddit political compass memes a couple years ago we used to call them watermelons - green on the outside but red on the inside. There are anarchist leftists for sure, I’m not saying it’s everybody. Those people are mostly pretty cool to me but authoritarian neolibs can eat a bag of dicks.
I hear you! I offer my position that neoliberals are conservatives. They have more tact and are more open to slight progress to attract votes, but they are still just conservatives who serve only corporations and billionaires to enrich themselves.
I also offer my position that the right spends a great deal of time re-defining words to use as weapons against the left. They will insist that authoritarianism and fascism are both leftist ideologies. Don’t give them even an inch. For example, they have spent decades calling all communism a left-wing construct. It is not.
There are some left-wing flavors of communism, but current Chinese communism and the old Soviet (Marxist-Leninist) communists are both extremely right-wing and conservative, even by their own definitions. Don’t let tankies (conservatives pretending to be leftists with conservative viewpoints) redefine words. Push back and make them look stupid. Wikipedia will absolutely back you up on these points if angry leftists like me aren’t around to jump in.
Well just becauar a democrat runs a city does not mean the cops are Democrats. The mayor doesn’t get to hire each cop or fire and replace the whole force.
This happens every week, all over the country. It’s a shameful disgrace.
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.
Almost one death a year. Should probably call Sherlock soon.
Wait, if they are sending patients to jail and treating them as criminal defendants what’s up with habeas corpus in that scenario? And if they’re not criminal defendants and are committed for mental health treatment why are they in jail? I mean, even before 15 deaths, that probably shouldn’t be how that goes.
They’re there pending a mental health evaluation. In this situation, the person is held until a mental health practitioner is able to meet with them to evaluate their eligibility for a treatment program, or to see if they are competent to stand trial for a crime they committed while of questionable mental stability. Importantly, in neither example has the person been charged with a crime.
The administrative reason they are in jail is that they have been ruled a danger to self, others or unknown risk factor. They have to be contained until evaluation, and we have literally no other choice but to use a jail for that. There are only around 400 beds total at the iirc 3 institutions in Mississippi that are certified to perform forensic mental health evaluations, and… well they’re full. It’s either put them in the jail, where at least they have a bed, or chain them to the gurney and leave them in a hallway at an overworked mental health institute (which is literally what happens. But trust me that somehow its much worse than you think.)
Yeah, okay, but sue the goverment to shit, then. Or whoever runs the medical institution in question not providing adequate service. The people responsible not having the resources or the political will doesn’t remove the rights of a patient. If I have a mentally ill relative that needs to be committed and they end up in jail for weeks I’d be pissed and extremely litigious even before they end up mysteriously dead.
And also, does “pending evaluation” suspend habeas corpus if there is no evaluation in place to deem them a risk? WTF? What’s to keep a hostile actor from maliciously putting a person in this track instead of properly charging them if they’re just trying to dump them in a hole for two weeks? How does that hold to any constitutional scrutiny in the US? Surely you’re either deemed incompetent and you are involuntarily committed until you’re not… or you have habeas corpus. The hell is this limbo in between?
I know even here there is a lot of grey areas in this subject and some shaky legal foundations to safety measures for people who can’t look after themselves, but… yeah, this seems messed up. More messed up than the baseline level of messed up around this thing.
Taking money from the already incredibly underfunded public service doesn’t seem like a great solution, but sure if you really want your payday, go for it. It’ll measurably make things worse, but you do you! However, if you want to see how to “sue the shit out of the government” in a productive manner, look up the trueblood lawsuit in Washington State.
Look, I’ll confess I’m pretty drunk right now and I’m sure I’ll regret being hostile to you in the morning. But you sound like a very decent person who, and thank your lucky stars for this, has no idea what you’re talking about. Habeas Corpus is the right to file a type of legal petition, for one thing. It’s not suspended during this process, you can file one to the court in response to this, and the jurisdiction will rule on it. However, in every jurisdiction I am familiar with, that petition would be thrown out unless you had evidence of gross misuse of the process. That’s because the patients aren’t being denied any of their rights during proper execution.
(I just wanna be clear that I’m not breaking this down point-by-point because I’m trying to rebut you, I’m just trashed and can’t remember what I’m talking about without the quotes there to read. You ask some very reasonable questions, too, that are worth highlighting.)
Surely you’re either deemed incompetent and you are involuntarily committed until you’re not… or you have habeas corpus.
Again, Habeas Corpus doesn’t work like that. This is a situation where the detention is wholly proper. And the confusion here is that you are being held on essentially evidential suspicion of being a risk. We can’t just let suicidal people go if there’s more reason to believe they’re going to kill themselves than not, that’s not how anything works. And we can’t say “oh, seems like you’re fine nvm fam” if you recently met the criterion to qualify for involuntary commitment and just let you go. That’s equally irresponsible. It’s a shitty situation. Once you’re in the system, it’s a moral gridlock until someone actually qualified to deal with the problem can finally get to you.
Unfortunately, forensic mental health evaluations require a highly skilled and certified practitioner to carry them out, and it turns out that there are fucking few of those that stick around in shithole places like Mississippi. Hell, even in the nice states there’s barely more than a handful of people qualified to carry these reviews out. One commonly proposed solution is, of course, to lower the certification requirements so the cops themselves can do the evaluation. I’m sure we all think that’s a great idea. The other, better solution is to train more people to be able to do these evaluations. We’re working on that. There are dozens of new medical schools focusing on mental health that have been built in the past several years, but the effect they have will be slow. Shit sucks.
What’s to keep a hostile actor from maliciously putting a person in this track instead of properly charging them if they’re just trying to dump them in a hole for two weeks?
Decent question. There are evaluatory criterion that must be met before the medical practitioner / law enforcement officer / other duly authorized authority can place someone under an official involuntary mental health restriction. It’s a checklist, it’s not very ambiguous, and it’s quite hard to actually meet all the criteria if you’re not actually at risk. However, just like ‘swatting’, I’m sure this could be abused by a determined enough asshole. People suck. There’s measures in place to prevent it’s abuse, so it’s much more difficult than ‘swatting’ someone, but there you go.
Or whoever runs the medical institution in question not providing adequate service.
My initial reaction is to tell you to fuck off, but that’s just because I see this sentiment constantly and it’s deeply frustrating. They are providing adequate service within their means. In fact, every facility in the country is operating far above their theoretical maximum capacity. How the fuck are they supposed to do more than they are right now? It’s not some “oh lazy staff” situation or whatever, the capacity of these facilities is dictated in large part by the fire codes. Most facilities are building new ward capacity, but building large buildings takes a great deal of time. And while that’s going on, the staff at these facilities have to deal with being assaulted every single day. They still show up to do this work because it’s important. But yeah, go off about how the “service” is “inadequate”. Fucking hell. The existing medical facilities are unable to handle the incredible strain put on them. The fuck are they supposed to do? I’m seriously asking because fuck if I have a good answer to this.
yeah, this seems messed up.
No argument here, though I’d say that this is well beyond ‘messed up’. This system is a gigantic, flaming dumpster fire. Unfortunately it’s wildly misunderstood and 2/3 of the country are standing around actively pouring gasoline onto it in either a malicious attempt to destroy the whole dumpster or a well-meaning attempt to extinguish the flames that hinges on the flawed belief that because water extinguishes fire, and water is a liquid, clearly all liquids must extinguish fires.
It’s great. We’re all going to die.
Heh, drunken rebuttals are so much better when they’re acknowledged as one. It really takes the edge off.
Alright, for one, I am not in the US or a US citizen, so a lot of my shock comes from there. For what it’s worth, I have not engaged with these processes in the US at all and here not professionally, but I did learn them because of life reasons. And like I said last time, it is messed up here too, in that some of the reasonable terms and limits to restricting someone’s autonomy and free movement do get suspended in a very weird grey area when precautionary measures, including for medical reasons, are established. Full judicial review can take years here, too, and cautionary measures can stand in place for that whole period. Just to ground the conversation a little.
However, over here before you get detained indefinitely for any reason, and yes, being suicidal counts, you still need that to get cleared by a judge. You can’t just hold a person for two weeks on the mere suspicion that they may harm themselves and not have a doctor or a court make a decision on whether there is reason for that. So already I am way out of my comfort zone in terms of constitutional guarantees at play here. Once you find somebody dead while that process is happening we’re in “maybe we need this to change right away” territory. When that happens a dozen times you mostly just set it all on fire and start over.
Now, on the specifics, I do have some questions for you, if you’re drunk enough to still pay attention to this thread.
One is that I’m a bit confused about the dfiference between being held pending evaluation and having a checklist of evaluatory criteria. Because it seems to me that if the actual evaluation is taking so long to happen that people are dying in the process then the checklist is the de facto evaluation. What’s the difference between that and letting the cops make the call? Which yeah, terrible idea, but… you know, if you just get there anyway through a loophole that seems like a problem.
For the record on the next thing, when I mean “whoever runs the institution” I mean whoever owns it, not the staff. I have no idea if this is all handled in public institutions (which is what I would expect here) or in private facilities (which is what I’d expect in the US, but maybe that’s my socialdemocracy bias). While we’re on this, I do take issue with the “don’t sue because the system is already underfunded” point. Those are two separate concerns, and if the impact is on the underfunded medical system then that’s a third problem. Asking victims (and this guy is dead, so… yeah, that’s the right word) to not seek compensation because the negligence is the result of more negligence in underfunding the system is not it. Of course these are all entirely hypothetical lawsuits, so who cares, but still.
Honestly, if you ask me what I’d do in that scenario… well, I’d get involved in the politics of it, which is what I’ve done in life when I bumped with that sort of stuff. I mean, the way I’m hearing it the main problem is funding and staffing. The way I see it, this is the still literally richest country on Earth. So yeah, the reaction must start with voting for anybody who will fix that by any amount and continue along a line that ends with locked down airports and food courts, like the French are doing today. Or at least with thousands of marches, like the Germans did a few weeks ago. I get it, half the US thinks that public services are evil (somehow), but holy shit, man, the camel’s back has to snap at some point.
Right?
Anyway, as a PS, you weren’t that hostile. For online forum rants that was maybe a 3/10. I’ve had way worse on accout of far less. If that makes you feel better, you’re a mellow drunken poster.
A process of indirect cost-shifting may have led to a form of “re-institutionalization” through the increased use of jail detention for those with mental disorders deemed unmanageable and noncompliant.[19][20] When laws were enacted requiring communities to take more responsibility for mental health care, necessary funding was often absent, and jail became the default option,[21] being cheaper than psychiatric care.[19]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalization_in_the_United_States
in the US the solution to mental health was locking people up in “institutions” staffed with doctors but now we have them locked up in what amounts to zoos and staffed with “correctional officers”
meanwhile we have Biden’s failed promise of police reform and healthcare
and Trump and Obama and the other presidents from years past on both sides have not helped to improve the situation either (maybe the people allowed to vote should look at other parties?)
articles like this come out all time and their meaning has been lost for a while now with no change in sight but still holding out on hope
Man thats weird seeing a photo of my town on the front page
I looked at their 2022 audit and they got a glowing review!
Somehow they still managed to torture an inmate to death in solitary confinement though. Weird; you’d think something would come up on the report.
Some highlights:
115.35
Specialized training: Medical and mental health care
Auditor Overall Determination: Meets Standard
Auditor Discussion
Mental Health Services are provided not in an RCF, but through the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Because of this, an offender requiring the previous mentioned services would need to be transferred back into the State prison system. Any offender in need of mental health services would be transferred on an emergent basis, and would have the possibility of returning, depending on the reason for transfer. If necessary, a telehealth consult could be conducted with the state facility to see if there was an immediate need for transfer.
Based on the organizational chart, it was confirmed that two medical staff are employed at ACRCF. Both employees have received appropriate training on how to detect and assess signs of sexual abuse and harassment, and are educated on how to preserve physical evidence of sexual abuse. These staff members have also received the appropriate training of how to respond effectively and professionally when dealing with victims of sexual abuse, harassment, or assault. There are no forensic examinations conducted at ACRCF.
115.82
Access to emergency medical and mental health services
Auditor Overall Determination: Meets Standard
Auditor Discussion
The facility has an option to transfer any inmate in need of immediate medical and/or mental health care back to MDOC for evaluation of needs.
Agency and facility policy support all areas of this standard and mandate immediate access to medical and mental health services. Included in this policy not only the timeliness of emergency medical treatment but the crisis intervention services as well. These are steps to be taken by the first responders in order to ensure protection of the victim. In addition to this, the policy also provides timely access to emergency contraception and sexually transmitted infection prophylaxis. In the event of needing these treatments, the victim would not face any financial cost for services.
Despite immediate care being provided at Magnolia Regional Hospital, any inmate needing extensive or long-term care will be transferred to a DOC prison with a larger medical or mental health unit in order to provide the appropriate form of treatment.
115.35 (d)
Specialized training: Medical and mental health care
Do medical and mental health care practitioners employed by the agency also receive training mandated for employees by §115.31? (N/A if the agency does not have any full- or part-time medical or mental health care practitioners employed by the agency.)
yes
Do medical and mental health care practitioners contracted by or volunteering for the agency also receive training mandated for contractors and volunteers by §115.32? (N/A if the agency does not have any full- or part-time medical or mental health care practitioners contracted by or volunteering for the agency.)
na
I watched We Own This City yesterday. Absolute fucking wild what is happening in that country. Shit you’d expect in Colombia or Kenya.
