Hundreds of people a year are detained in county jails awaiting treatment, and are treated like criminal defendants although they've been charged with no crime.

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.

  • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
    262·
    5 months ago

    “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.”

      • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
        11·
        5 months ago

        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.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
          221·
          5 months ago

          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.

          • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
            10·
            5 months ago

            “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.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
              216·
              5 months ago

              Currently I’m reading the Jakarta Method, actually. I try to do at least one book a month.

              Also, Stalin was completely right and that’s why European social democracies are having a resurgence of fascist parties. Also, again, social democrats in America supporting genocide. Liberals are liberals, the reason leftists are excluded is because we don’t count and aren’t allowed to be part of society or politics.

          • prole@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            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.

              • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
                2·
                5 months ago

                Maybe you didn’t, but you didn’t read three words into the article. “Social Fascism was”…

                Not Is. If the term even still exists, it isn’t being used to refer to that.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
                  19·
                  5 months ago

                  The way that Labor Zionism has allied itself with genocidal colonialism shows very clearly that it still is.

                  I will say some of the US’s socdems, at least, have called for a ceasefire and have called out apartheid. They still won’t call this genocide, though, and I think only Rashida Talib has the correct stance (i.e. a free Palestine from the river to the sea).

              • prole@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                1·
                5 months ago

                Did you even read that?

                was a theory that was supported by the Communist International (Comintern) and affiliated communist parties in the early 1930s, which they used to discredit social democracy as a moderate variant of fascism because it stood in the way of a dictatorship of the proletariat

                The communists literally invented the term in an attempt to discredit Social Democrats. It’s not an accurate descriptor.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
                  26·
                  5 months ago

                  No, they invented a term to correctly identify actually existing social democracy. It was accurate then and it still is.