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.
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
