Escambia Jail Deaths 2021

Sadly we had an inmate in our custody die a few weeks back.  It is being investigated and there have been stories in the media about this individual and her various medical issues.  As I said on the news, her death is a tragedy of immense proportion, and I join everyone else in wanting more information on what happend and what caused this death.

There are more details coming to light about what happened at the hospital before this individual was brought to the jail.  We will eventually get more detail and know with certainty what happened.

This was the 6th death at our jail in a year, a number which on its face seems shocking.  One individual with whom I spoke stated his belief that a recent study indicated that 90% of jails in the state have "0" deaths year over year.   I questioned this statement, I do not believe it.

So who was it that died this year, and how did they die?

In multiple conversations with our lawyer, I have been advised that there is very little that can be legally disseminated regarding individuals and their conditions and their casue(s) of death if such information is/was gleaned from a review of the patients' death certificate, due to state and federal patient privacy rules.  I respect and understand, so I will not divulge anything that is protected heatlh information and I have never seen any death certificates from any inmates in our custody.

But neither will I let a "narrative" build that our jails are death camps and our corrections officers are complicit in some sort of a negligent level of care which leads to death of inmates unnecessarily.

The media would have you belive that 25 year old triathletes are going to jail healthy and coming out on gurneys dead.  And they'd also have you believe there was nefarious conduct which led to such deaths and that oh, by the way, the deaths were all black citizens, not white.  That's what some folks would have you believe.  But it isn't true.

Here is the truth.

Of the 6 deaths of the thousands of individual inmates in our custody throughout 2021--four died at the hosptials where such individuals were sent for medical care---only two died "at" the jail.

4 were white inmates, 2 were black.

Ages were as follows:

68, 66, 64, 51, 38, and the last one was a 20 year old.

One died of a chronic medical condition, two died of complications from a virus, one of a sudden medical event, one from multiple issues related to treatment/refusal of treatment/treatment/refusal of treatment for a chronic, pre-existing condition, and the final one we are waiting to know about, the 20 year old.

Not one, so far as I've been told, suffered a beating or abuse by staff or other inmates leading to death.

Not one, so far as I've been told, was a result of our employees' failure to follow protocol and policy.

We have good, dedicated staff running our jail.  We have protocols and policies in place to keep inmates and employees safe.  Even still, it can be a dangerous place.  Look no further than the incident the other day where one of our officers was attacked and beaten viciously by an inmate.  It is a tough and sometimes dangerous job these men and women do working in our jail.

We have, at any given time, 1500 or more inmates in our care at the jail.  Many of whom have tremendous physical/medical issues and pre-existing conditions.  Many are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol.  A high percentage of our prisoners have medical issues before they ever get to our jail and therefore we spend enormous sums providing care to these folks for which they have NEVER had care before.  We have a world-class infirmary and a dedicated medical staff in our jail.  We spend tremendous sums of taxpayer monies providing medical and dental services to our inmates.  This is the policy of this county, and what we as board members demand.We genuinely care about those folks that are incarcerated--our goal is ZERO inmate deaths while in our custody..

So if we as an organization have done something wrong--I'll be the first to say so and demand consequences.

But the other side of the story is, I won't stand for folks to be burned at the stake for doing their difficult jobs professionally in a really tough setting where most people would never want to work.

Folks who are truly interested in this topic should read this article.  It is loaded with stats collected from jails of all sizes nationwide and does a very good job of analyzing this topic with data and facts.