Fifteen deaths of Mississippi inmates in one month is normal? That’s what the state’s corrections commissioner claims.
We’d like to see the statistics to back up that assertion. They shouldn’t be hard to pull. The Mississippi Department of Corrections has records surely of every inmate who dies while in its custody. Go back the past year or two and give the names and dates of death of every inmate who has passed away.
The problem with MDOC is that it provides very little information on inmates — living or dead — unless it’s compelled to do so.
The Department of Corrections says the 15 inmates who died in August ranged in age from 24 to 78.
MDOC has attributed only one death, of an inmate found in his cell, to a fight. Two were supposedly suicides. The others were mostly from natural causes, according to Pelicia Hall, who leads the MDOC.
Autopsies are planned, though, and Gov. Phil Bryant has said that all the deaths will be investigated. He said inmates who die “are just as important as anyone else in the state of Mississippi whose lives have been lost.”
If the governor is sincere about that, he can show it by telling Hall and the Department of Corrections to be more forthcoming with the details.
When a person dies in the free world, authorities in most cases don’t have to wait on an autopsy to let the public know what the other evidence points to as far as the cause of death.
When an inmate dies behind bars or while under guard in a hospital, there’s no legitimate reason for being any less forthcoming
