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.
Right authoritarianism is fascism, that’s the definition. But left authoritarianism is a very, very real thing. And many people who claim to be libertarian leftists still want authorities to enforce their ideals. Back when I used to shitpost on Reddit political compass memes a couple years ago we used to call them watermelons - green on the outside but red on the inside. There are anarchist leftists for sure, I’m not saying it’s everybody. Those people are mostly pretty cool to me but authoritarian neolibs can eat a bag of dicks.