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.

  • prole@sh.itjust.works
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    10 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.