Mississippi Today
Man with no criminal charges died from a complication of diabetes in Alcorn County Jail
James Tatsch had no criminal charges pending against him when he died in jail from a complication of diabetes.
Tatsch, who was 48 years old, was jailed while waiting on mental health treatment during Mississippi’s involuntary commitment process. When he was found unresponsive in his cell in Corinth on Jan. 17, he had been detained for 12 days.ย
His death was caused by diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition that develops when a person’s body does not have enough insulin for blood sugar to provide energy to its cells, according to the findings of the state medical examiner’s autopsy report.
Jail staff knew Tatsch was diabetic, Alcorn County Sheriff Ben Caldwell told Mississippi Today. He does not believe the jail is at fault for Tatsch’s death.
โFrom everything that I’ve seen and all the reports and all the information that I’ve checked on, it appears that my staff was doing what they needed to do,โ he said. โIt’s a tragedy.โ
Alcorn County Correctional Facility does not have a written or uniform policy for treating diabetic patients, said Caldwell. Rather, the facility’s medical staff โ a doctor, registered nurse and a licensed practical nurse โ creates an individualized procedure of care for each patient.
Death by diabetic ketoacidosis is preventable, said nurse practitioner KC Arnold, owner of The Diabetes Center in Ocean Springs.
Illness, missed insulin shots, a clogged insulin pump or the wrong insulin dose are the most common causes of diabetic ketoacidosis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Arnold said people in custody with diabetes are often given a combination of intermediate and rapid-acting insulin twice a day.
โIt’s not the best care, but that would keep him out of (diabetic ketoacidosis) if he had known diabetes,โ she said.
READ MORE: Committed to Jail series
Jails and prisons should have written policies and procedures for diabetes care and provide training to medical and non-medical staff, said the American Diabetes Association in a statement published earlier this year.ย
โThese policies would ensure that detainees have timely access to necessary treatment at all appropriate levels of care,โ the statement said.
Tatsch is one of at least 15 people who have died after being jailed through Mississippi’s involuntary commitment process. Nine of them committed suicide.
During the process, people who pose a threat to themselves or others can be ordered to county jails while they await mental health evaluation or treatment.
Laws allowing people with mental health concerns to be involuntarily taken into custody exist in every state. But reporting from Mississippi Today and ProPublica revealed that no other state jailed people in the civil commitment process without criminal charges with such frequency, and often for days or weeks.
The state revised its civil commitment law earlier this year. It now requires a screening to be completed by the local Community Mental Health Center before a person is jailed and for other treatment options be considered first.
Because Tatsch’s death is under investigation, Mississippi Today could not access jail records. Caldwell, however, provided an account of what happened that day.ย ย
The morning of the day he died, Tatsch began โacting erratically,โ Caldwell said. He was moved from a standard housing unit to the jail’s โsegregationโ area, where he was locked in a cell alone and checked on by guards every 30 minutes.
His blood sugar was checked at 12:08pm. It was high, and he was given insulin.
A guard checked on Tatsch, spoke to him and observed him eating from a jail-issued snack bag less than half an hour before he was found unconscious. He was found unresponsive within 30 minutes and transported to Magnolia Regional Health Center, where he was pronounced dead.ย
The incident time was 10:40pm, according to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation incident report.
Caldwell was not certain what other diabetic care Tatsch received on the day of his death. He first told Mississippi Today that the midday blood sugar check was the result of a complaint made by Tatsch, but later said it was a regular mealtime test. He was unsure when Tatsch’s blood sugar was checked at other times during the day.
He said he could not share details about Tatsch’s treatment regimen or say when he last received insulin because he turned all relevant documents over to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, including statements from officers on duty.
The agency began looking into Tatsch’s death after Caldwell asked for an investigation. He made the request less than an hour after Tatsch’s death occurred, according to the incident report.
The investigation will be presented to a grand jury, or a group of citizens who review evidence to determine whether someone should be tried for a crime, in November.
The grand jury proceeding was requested by former Alcorn County District Attorney John Weddle. Current District Attorney Jason Herring said he could not comment on pending matters, but that the county presents all in-custody death cases to a grand jury.
Caldwell reviewed the incident for any possible policy changes that could have prevented the death but found none, he said.
โThis is a tragedy, but this is not representative of the care they provide the inmates here. That’s our number one priority, obviously the safety and security of the public as well as the inmates that are here and their safety and wellbeing.โ
Arnold said symptoms of diabetic ketoacidosis arise before a patient is in critical condition and can include vomiting, frequent urination, weakness or nausea.
โAny medical practitioner would recognize that,โ she said.
Greta Martin, litigation director for Disability Rights Mississippi, said she sees a statewide failure in jails and prisons to properly treat diabetes, which qualifies as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Incarcerated people with diabetes often do not receive timely medication, regular chronic care check-ups or prescribed diabetes diets, said Martin.
โDiabetes unchecked and untreated can cause a myriad of problems that could be significant and life threatening,โ she said.
Seventeen people have died in state custody from diabetes-related causes since 2015, according to Department of Corrections records. This number does not include people who are in counties’ custody, like Tatsch.
Jail and medical personnel have been held liable for an incarcerated person’s death from diabetes in Mississippi before.
In 2022, George County agreed to pay a $2.8 million settlement after an insulin-dependent man in George County Regional Correctional Facility went seven days without insulin. The jail’s nurse was sentenced to 15 years for manslaughter.
Sheriffs are responsible for providing proper medical care to people incarcerated in county jails, including people held in jail during civil commitment, said Cliff Johnson, the director of Mississippi’s MacArthur Justice Center, an organization that advocates for people who are incarcerated.
โSheriffs have consistently complained to us that the burden of Mississippi’s inadequate mental health system has fallen on them,โ he said.
โThey concede that they’re not trained to take care of people with mental illness and they wish they didn’t have to. The reality for sheriffs โฆ is that they owe everyone in their jail a duty to keep them safe, to provide them with the medical care and the mental health care the law requires.โ
It is unclear if Tatsch was ever evaluated by a mental health professional or had a hearing during his 12-day incarceration. At the time, the law required a hearing to be held within seven to 10 days.ย
Alcorn County Chancery Clerk Keith Settlemires, whose office is responsible for coordinating the civil commitment process, declined to speak to Mississippi Today about Tatsch’s case.
Jason Ramey, the executive director of Region IV, the local community mental health center that provides screening during the civil commitment process, said that Region IV has communicated with the Alcorn County Chancery Clerk’s office about the services the center provides, including a crisis stabilization unit.
Crisis stabilization units offer stabilization and treatment to people with severe mental illness or who are in psychiatric crisis and provide an alternative to incarceration for people in the civil commitment process.
Mississippi Today reached out to several of Tatsch’s family members but did not reach any who knew him personally.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Buses, notaries and strolls to the polls: How Mississippi college students are overcoming the nationโs toughest barriers to the ballot box
In 2016, Jarrius Adams’ absentee ballot never arrived at his apartment in Oxford, so the then-19-year-old at the University of Mississippi was left with one option to vote: Skip all his classes and drive four hours home to his polling place in Hattiesburg.
Faced with a similar situation, the reality is most college students would decide not to vote, said Adams, who now works with the nonprofit Mississippi Votes.
โFor some students, it’s just as simple as eating three times a day now that you have no supervision,โ he said. โTo add voting for the first time?โ
It can be hard to cast a ballot in Mississippi, where state voting laws consistently rank as among the strictest in the nation.
But for the state’s tens of thousands of college students โ many of whom are voting for the first time while also trying to stay on top of homework, classes, chores and having a social life โ the barriers to the ballot box faced by all Mississippi voters pose an even greater challenge.
Mississippi is one of just three states without early voting. This means college students who choose to vote in person most likely have just one day to get to the polls, which are not always on campus. According to a list provided by the Secretary of State’s office, three of the eight public universities in Mississippi lack an on-campus polling location for this election.ย
When college students turn 18 in Mississippi, they are not automatically registered to vote if they have a driver’s license, a law on the books in 23 other states. There’s no same-day voter registration, which voting experts say can pose an issue for college students whose addresses, and therefore precincts, change more often than other voters. And Mississippi doesn’t have online voter registration for new applicants.ย
Mississippi โpretty much has all the things that make it hard to vote,โ said Jennifer McAndrew, the senior director of strategic communications for Tisch College at Tufts University, which houses the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement.
Nevertheless, colleges and students who have been working all semester long to encourage their peers to vote say that young Mississippians pursuing higher education are motivated to turn out this Election Day.
“Our young Mississippians are the future of our state,” Secretary of State Michael Watson, who has visited colleges across the state to talk to students about voting, said in a statement. “It is important for them to educate themselves not just on the voting process, but also the policies and issues affecting the state and nation..โ
At Ole Miss this semester, the Center for Community Engagement has registered more students to vote before the deadline in an election year than it ever has before: About 350 students, according to William Teer, the program director for student leadership programs and financial well-being.
Now, it’s just a matter of getting these students to the polls.
โEveryone hears about how young people and college students in particular don’t vote in huge numbers for whatever reason,โ said Marshall Pendes, a senior math and economics major who serves as a voting ambassador at Ole Miss. โI get a chance as a student to try and change that.โ
Pendes cited a study that Tufts’ National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement conducted of student voting at Ole Miss, which found that about 15,000 students โ more than 75% of campus โ were registered to vote during the last presidential election.
That’s in part because of the efforts of voting ambassadors like Pendes. In his four years at the university, Pendes estimated he’s helped register more than 600 students. He’s helped students complete the Mississippi Secretary of State’s paper registration application all across campus, at fraternities and sororities, before and after class, during student government meetings, in the Circle and at meetings for all kinds of political clubs.
But not so much on in the Grove.
โDuring games, people aren’t really interested in doing paperwork,โ Pendes said.
The goal is to educate students on how, where and why it’s important to vote, Pendes said, whether that’s in-person in the county where they attend school or at home through an absentee ballot.
โOne of the great things about voting as a college student is you have so many choices,โ he said. โEvery person’s situation is different.โ
Even though college students qualify for an absentee ballot in Mississippi, students say it’s far more common for their peers to register to vote in their college’s county.
โIt’s more common for students to register on campus,โ said Avantavis TyMon, an elementary education major at Alcorn State University who is also a Mississippi Votes’ Democracy in Action fellow. โIt’s easier, and it’s more accessible โฆ especially for the out-of-state students who don’t have cars.โ
Alcorn State University is one of five public universities that will host on-campus precincts this year, along with Mississippi Valley State University, Mississippi State University, the University of Southern Mississippi and Jackson State University.ย
Though Delta State University does not have an on-campus voting location, there is a precinct across the street.
On Election Day, TyMon said he and other student leaders plan to canvass the dorms and ask students if they want to join a โstroll to the pollsโ event, which will involve a short walk to the on-campus precinct.
โIt’s a little bit of a walk from where students live,โ TyMon said, adding that in previous years, โwe would meet up and all walk together.โ
Mississippi’s absentee ballot process, which experts describe as onerous, may be another reason college students register to vote in-person in greater numbers.
โIt is an unbelievable barrier for college students who don’t live in Mississippi or are voting absentee in Mississippi,โ McAndrews said.
First, a voter must request an absentee ballot application from their circuit clerk’s office, according to a step-by-step guide from the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office. Once they receive the application in the mail, the voter must have it witnessed by a notary, unless they are disabled. When a voter gets a ballot, the next step is finding another notary to watch the voter fill it out.
โYou can do your taxes in one day,โ Adams said. In Mississippi, โyou cannot vote by mail in one day.โ
Even some notaries think Mississippi’s absentee ballot law could be eased.
Bill Anderson, the vice president of government affairs at the National Notary Association, said that, of the handful of states that involve notaries in the process, Mississippi’s law is the strictest.
โYou’d expect us to be supportive of states that allow or create a role for notaries in absentee ballots,โ Anderson said. โWe think this is a good idea. โฆ These states, including Mississippi, want there to be a layer of security that is absent for voters voting absentee.โ
Nonetheless, Anderson said he is hoping to work with Mississippi lawmakers next year on some issues he sees with what he called the โnon-notarial functionsโ required by the state’s law.
For instance, Mississippi’s law requires notaries to sign the back of the envelope containing the voters’ ballot, something Anderson said is not expressly permitted by the notary laws of his home state in California. And Mississippi doesn’t oblige notaries to affix their seal to the envelope, which Anderson said other states require notaries to do.
โYou can just imagine the poor voter,โ Anderson said. โThey’re out here, and the California notary is trying to find their state law and doesn’t want to get in trouble with the Secretary of State of California and says look โฆ I’d love to do this for you, but I can’t.โ
For his part, Pendes said he thinks students who want to vote absentee are motivated to find notaries, which can be relatively easy to do on a college campus.
โIn my experience, people usually aren’t defeated by the notarization part,โ he said.
At Mississippi State, the student government association and the Division of Student Affairs held an event called โNotary Dayโ last week. More than 70 students had their absentee ballots notarized, said Carson McFatridge, the student association president.
โWhen I think of a notary, I think of someone at the bank,โ she said. โThat can be a challenge just not knowing who has the capability to do that โฆ so it was really, really cool to be able to see people like our dean of students volunteer an hour of his time to sit out there and help people.โ
McAndrew said it’s important for colleges to make voting as a student as simple as possible, because even the perception that voting is complicated is itself a barrier.
โThere’s so much out there about strict voter ID laws, it becomes this ghost barrier on top of the actual barrier,โ McAndrew said.
โAnything we can do not only to reduce the complexity but to reduce the intimidation and anxiety factor is really important,โ she added.
To that end, many professors have canceled classes to give students the day off to vote, and universities across the state are offering rides to the polls. At Ole Miss, buses will leave from the Walk of Champions and behind Ole Miss Bike Shop from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day.
This does more than help students without cars, Pendes said.
โThe other thing to consider is that parking spaces on our campus are extremely hard to come by,โ he said. โDo you want to move your car and lose your parking space to try to go vote? Because that isn’t necessarily something that’s always guaranteed to you, especially in commuter spaces.โ
This semester, the Center for Community Engagement was also successful in finding a solution to an issue that has troubled student voters for years at Ole Miss, which is that residence halls and Greek Life houses are not considered acceptable mailing addresses at which to register.
Teer, the program director, said he worked with the Lafayette County Circuit Clerk’s office to establish the center as a mailing address for students who live on campus.
โWe’ve had students coming in daily because they’ve received an email from us that their voter information cards had arrived,โ Teer said.
Every Thursday, students at Alcorn State held a voter registration event at the campus chapel. TyMon also helped organize a voter registration block party that featured food trucks. These efforts resulted in more than 400 students registering to vote.
TyMon said he thinks student leaders have an important role to play in setting an example for their peers.
โWhen they see that we’re serious, they get serious,โ he said.
That’s why A’Davion Bush, a sophomore political science major at Ole Miss, is going to drive home to Indianola not just to vote, but to volunteer at the polls. The Mississippi Votes’ Democracy in Action fellow said he’s going to post about his plan on social media so his friends who are still in high school will be inspired to vote when they turn 18.
โThe older population is not doing anything to influence young people in my county,โ he said.
McFatridge, the student body president at Mississippi State, said she recently registered a student to vote who had just become a U.S. citizen, which reminded her that while voting is a right, it’s also a privilege not had by everyone around the world.
Not voting in the U.S. is โkind of like looking a gift horse in the mouth,โ McFatridge said.
โIt’s a silly phrase,โ she added, โbut I truly believe that when given the opportunity to share your own thoughts and beliefs, I don’t know why you wouldn’t.โ
An Arkansan, McFatridge had intended to vote early in her hometown of Searcy during fall break, but a family emergency prevented that.
It’s too late for her to order an absentee ballot, so now she’s driving home to vote before Election Day, 4.5 hours away.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1870
Oct. 30, 1870
Three Black men challenged the racist system of segregation in Louisville, Kentucky. They paid their fares and sat up front on a trolley โ only to be challenged by the driver and a white passenger.
Robert Fox, an elderly mortician, said he and his business partners had the same right to ride as whites. The driver alerted his central office, and soon a group of white drivers dragged them off the trolley, kicking them and shouting racial slurs. Police arrested the trio, whose lawyer argued that their disorderly conduct arrests had taken place because of their race.
โThey are good citizens,โ their lawyer said, โand they ask for simple justice and nothing more.โ
The judge fined the trio $5, and Black passengers boycotted the trolley. Fox sued the Central Passenger Railroad Company, which ruled in his favor and awarded him $15. Inspired by the victory, Black passengers began staging โride-insโ across the city. The protests led to clashes on the city streets, and Louisville’s mayor intervened. Streetcar companies agreed to desegregate the trolleys, and the Black citizens rejoiced. They had really won.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Will Mississippi schools join the cellphone ban bandwagon?
Many state lawmakers want to take action on teen mental health and say they believe restricting cellphone use in schools is a solution. But opinions and research on the topic are mixed.
Among those who oppose a full ban: Two high school students from opposite ends of the state.
Kate Riddle, a senior from Lafayette County School District, told Mississippi Today that her social media experience has always been โpositive and uplifting.โ
โSocial media can be a positive or negative tool; it just depends on how you use it,โ she said.
Riddle said she uses it for communication, news and entertainment.
Crosby Parker, a junior from the Gulfport School District, also said social media hasn’t had a โtangible impactโ on his mental health and that he uses it on a โneed-to basisโ to talk to friends.
Neither supports a full cellphone ban. But Riddle acknowledged that โphones are an immense problem in school districts and finding a way to navigate the challenges that they will bring in the coming years is vital to the success of all,โ
Riddle supports a phone ban for elementary school students, but not necessarily for older students. She suggested schools restrict cellphone use without banning phones entirely, such as taking them up before class.
Parker supports his school’s current policy, where students can use their phones anywhere except during class.
โThis allows students to stay in communication with their family throughout the day, and it limits the phones to any time that doesn’t distract others from learning,โ he said.
Earlier this month, the state youth mental health task force released their recommendations. Among them was that all school districts implement policies on cellphones and social media use in classrooms.
At the same time, Rep. Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany, a task force member, is drafting a bill to ban cellphones in schools statewide with possibly leaving it up to each of the state’s 144 school districts to determine how to do that..
โAs we recognize the importance of technology, we also have to recognize the importance of our children’s health, which includes mental health,โ he said.
Cellphones are ubiquitous in American culture. Pew Research Center found that 95% of American teenagers between 13 and 17 have a smartphone and 23% reported using social media for four or more hours a day.
Many educators, parents and researchers fear phones are driving the nation’s youth mental health crisis with 72% of high school teachers telling the Pew Research Center in June that they think cellphones are a major problem in classrooms.
Jonathan Haidt’s โThe Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illnessโ describes how teen mental health has declined sharply since 2010. In 2020, teen suicide rates increased 91% for boys and 167% for girls. The percent of teens who reported having at least one episode of major depression increased 145% for girls and 161% for boys. Haidt and many other researchers attribute this decline to the rise of social media and cellphone use.
Last year, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a report warning about how social media harms teen mental health, citing statistics that 46% of teens said social media makes them feel worse about their body image and 64% said they were โoftenโ or โsometimesโ exposed to hate content.
Creekmore said Haidt’s book and the surgeon general’s report are major influences for his bill.
According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 68% of American adults support banning cellphones from middle and high school classrooms. Eight states have passed bans and/or restrictions on cellphones in schools so far.
In Mississippi this year, Marshall County School District and Greenwood School District introduced bans on cellphone use during school hours.
โVast research connects the decline in mental health among children and adolescents in part to the near constant use of smartphones and social media,โ Lt Gov Delbert Hosemann said in a statement to Mississippi Today.
Touching on the concerns about school safety in the wake of multiple school shootings, he said, โSchool safety and ensuring parents can stay connected with their children are also important concerns. We are confident local districts can negotiate these competing concerns and implement policies protecting instructional time from distraction.โ
Cellphone bans have their drawbacks. They can be difficult to enforce, and some parents want to be able to reach their children for pick-ups and emergencies. However, the National School Safety and Security Services says that using a phone during an emergency can actually cause more trouble by distracting people, overloading cellphone systems, disrupting evacuation efforts and more.
The research on cellphone use and its impact on teens is more mixed. There are several places where the research is lacking, including what types of content cause the most harm and how exactly social media creates/exacerbates mental health problems.
The National Academy of Sciences‘ report on the topic pointed out the positives to using social media, such as communication, learning and connection. The surgeon general’s report also found that 58% of teens said that social media made them feel more accepted.
Lynda Stewart, a mental health counselor and director of the Division of Children and Youth Services at Mississippi’s Department of Mental Health, is also part of the state task force. While she said she has no opinion on cellphone bans, she pointed out that they’re not the only factors harming youth mental health.
โAdolescence is a very, very difficult time. It’s a time when children are growing and changing,โ she said.
Stewart cited the pandemic and academic and social pressures as major problems. Young people are also more aware about mental health and are less afraid to reach out for help than previous generations.
โOne thing we know about our youth today is that they’re strong and they’re brave,โ she said, โand they’re more willing than any other generation of youth to let somebody know when they’re not okay.โ
The task force made several recommendations, including more schools partnering with community health centers, more mental health professionals on school staff and universal mental health screenings for students.
Stewart advised parents to check in with their kids daily and look out for behavioral red flags. This includes them always being alone, dropping hobbies they used to love, getting bad grades, and drastic changes in their style and friend groups.
Mental Health Mississippi provides information on mental health providers in the state. For mental health crises, dial the national suicide and crisis line at 988. You can also dial the DMH helpline at 1-877-210-8513 for help and information about mental health services.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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