55yo mother dies in Pennsylvania jail

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Serving 48 hour sentence for childrens truancy.
How ridiculous is this?

https://www.freespeech.org/text/pa-moth ... violations

If she isn't going to take care of her own children, then she belongs in jail.

Who takes care of them when she is in jail?

Do we know the exact circumstances of why she couldn't make them go? In some cases it could be neglect but in some cases it's not. My mother couldn't make me go to school as a teenager and her getting sent to jail would not have changed anything other than to cause more stress and arguments in my home over my refusing to go to school. It also would have left me home with just my grandmother who was even less able to make me go and probably would have made my mother lose her job and we were poor enough as it was.

I hate to say this after all I went through but I suppose it's the kids that should get sent away and locked up, not the parent. That was the only thing that could make me go to school, being sent away to one that I lived at and couldn't leave. If I hadn't been 16 and quit school when I got out I likely would have been in trouble for truancy again. Won't the kids be sent away anyways if the mother is a single parent and doesn't have anyone to take them while she is in jail?

The Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment of people in custody. But hey, let's not let that get in the way of a good old-fashioned chest beating over punishing the crim'nals.

I would suggest that you learn the meaning of "cruel and unusual punishment" before you embarrass yourself like that.

Tying ropes to her ankles and hanging her upside down from the water tower would be "cruel and unusual punishment".

Making her drink a bucket of mop water would be "cruel and unusual punishment".

Tying her to a car and dragging her down the highway would be "cruel and unusual punishment".

Putting her in jail is NOT "cruel and unusual punishment". In fact, putting someone in jail is not considered to be cruel and it is hardly unusual.

According to the article, the maximum sentence for the offence is five days in jail. There is no possible way that could be considered "cruel and unusual".

NO, none of those are considered cruel and unusual at all. However, denying an inmate's medication that is necessary to survival is. I read she had a heart condition and they refused to give her the required medication. If true, that IS cruel and unusual punishment.

A generation or two ago parents had far more rights and tools to deal with this sort of thing. And I don't care how good a parent you are, challenging behaviour from some children can and does happen. We can not of course know ALL of the circumstances surrounding this. However I can speak from experience of being jailed for trying to be a good parent! Over a year later (without my intervention), my daughter admitted that she made up the abuse story because I refused to let her spend the night with a friend that we DIDN'T approve of. They never did find evidence of abuse (I was only in the slammer for 3 days IIRC) but you can guess what happens to your job, family relations, etc.

Now it is even worse as you basically can't do much of anything to discipline children other then ineffective and ludicrous timeouts. You get jailed for trying to be a good parent, and you get jailed if you child runs off and refuses to listen. I would NEVER have children again in this day and age! Between 4 children of my own, 3 step children (two of which were schizo effective), and one grandchild I have raised and dealt with these kinds of issues. It was hard enough then, I don't know how a parent now would deal with a child under even more restrictive laws.

Yes there are bad parents. And there are just as many or more good parents that deal with heartache every day as they attempt to do what is right for their children. And getting law enforcement to help rarely helps around here. They and children's services are stacked AGAINST you! From your comments on this subject I have to assume either you never had children, or if you did you were fortunate that your children weren't the handful some of us have had. Yet you are VERY quick to throw stones. And please DON'T bring up race, socioeconomic, and other asinine factors to try and back up your opinion. Rich or poor, black or white many of us have been in these situations and worse. Looking back now and seeing others deal with this I consider myself fortunate. Could have ended up far more badly!!

What I read was that she had a problem with high blood pressure. Much of my family has had high blood pressure although mine is pretty much the same now as it was forty years ago.

From what I understand, not taking blood pressure for a couple of days is not generally considered to be a medical emergency although skipping it is not something that anyone should do if they have high blood pressure.

According to one attorney commenting on this from a nearby state, the usual practice is take your medicine with you to jail and give it to the jail's nurse (if there is a jail nurse) or to the guard's supervisor who will then administer it as required.

I have seen nothing to suggest that she took the medication with her; I have seen nonthing to suggest that the jail withheld the medication from her; and I have seen nothing to suggest that her death is the result of not taking that medication.

Where the hell did that come from?

Never said you did. However since you have been making so many misinformed assumptions and since NONE of us know all the facts, I wanted to include that as a just-in-case deal. There are a slew of stories and reports out there on this and that is why I say it MAY have been criminal to withhold medicine from the woman. One report suggested she indeed had them on her when they booked her. If that is so and no one bothered to look into it, to me that is at minimum negligent homicide. Breaking laws or not breaking laws does not condone mistreatment of any human. We will have to wait and see what a coroner rules (haven't checked on this last 2 days) and if they have an investigation concerning her death. I would also like to know if children services had been involved at all and tried to help the woman. Police should have helped, but with rampant crime, drugs, and all else they deal with they are stretched thin most places anyhow.

Bottom line is very likely this woman should NOT have died in custody. I wonder how often they even checked in on her and how long before she had passed and anyone had noticed. Know I just get my dander up when people jump to conclusions without all the facts. At this point I feel we have to give the woman the benefit of the doubt and assume she was a good mother till proven otherwise. I know what a handful an 8 year old who has schizo effective disorder can be. He attacked his sister and baby daughter and I had to physically restrain him (I had him in reverse arm lock) till the deputies came. They wanted to arrest ME for that! They said a big guy like you can't handle a little kid like that? Well once they started dealing with him, after a few minutes all mention of my being at fault disappeared and they said they had to haul the child off for the safety of himself and especially others.

My point is DON'T judge ANYONE till all the facts are known. We may find out the jail staff and police were blameless in all this and the woman at fault. But if she had to deal with anything close to what I did, most likely she had no way of controlling the child under similar circumstance if they existed. We will have to wait till this plays out.

Precisely WHICH assumptions have I made that were MISINFORMED?

It is quite clear that she wasn't getting her children to go to school. That was her responsibility and she failed unless there was a good reason for them to miss school. Here's an assumption for you: if there was a good reason for them to miss school, then the absence should be an excused absence and there should have been no citation for truancy.

Can you provide links to stories reporting that the jail withheld her medication? Can you provide links to stories reporting that the lack of medication resulted in her death?



Now who is making assumptions?

How often should the jailers go around to every prisoner and make sure they are alive?



It has been reported that the judge ordered her to show up in court with proof of bills and income. If she had done so, he would have had reason to not jail her, but since she failed to do so, he had to follow the law.

Here's a story for you. From http://blog.credit.com/2014/06/woman-jailed-over-outstanding-debt-dies-in-her-cell-85240/:

What's that again? She "skipped" hearings? Being unprepared for a hearing is one thing but skipping a hearing is inexcusable if there is any way she could have attended.

I don't know about where you are from, but around here if you skip court hearings, you are likely to find yourself waiting for the next court hearing from a jail cell. And that can be for weeks or months.

From http://readingeagle.com/Section/Splash?page=/news/article/medical-screening-routine-for-inmates-at-berks-county-prison:

So they didn't give her the medications, but they seem to be hinting that they didn't know about them. However, he doesn't come out and say that they didn't know about the medications.

Precisely why I stated that we shouldn't convict her BEFORE the facts come out. Until the investigations are completed along with the autopsy, we WON'T know. And even then, we may never fully know the truth. We have had 1 case in Ohio where that Castro fellow who was guilty of holding the three women and child hostage for 10 years die in Manci. He was a new intake and they have certain protocols here they are to follow until they are sure someone is acclimating to life behind bars, suicide watch for one notable reason. Well they logged they DID check in on him and it turns out they falsified records and hadn't. IIRC they got off with just losing their job at Manci. Admittedly this guy was scum, but does NOT excuse what happened there. Clearly these employees were negligent in their duties.

Until the autopsy and investigations are over, the only thing we know for sure is she died in that cell. The staff may truly be blameless, but then again perhaps not. They have admitted to her NOT getting her medications. Whether this is an oversight on their part, intentional on their part, or perhaps her fault is NOT yet known. But I know enough about hypertension and heart conditions to know that going without meds that long would kill my mother and possibly would kill me (if I was lucky). For me personally that would be better then living hell of a massive stroke and living with that the rest of my life. So these meds are essential and can be life threatening dependent upon the individual's state of health. If it was mild hypertension no, but if like my mother or others I know it would be a death sentence.

She must be extremely sick, then.

From what I understand, not taking your blood pressure medication can increase your chance of death by as much as 3 to 4 times. That sounds like a huge amount, but think about it.

I guess if you had a 1 in 3 chance of dying that day while taking your blood pressure medication, then not taking it would be pretty likely to result in death. Even then, I don't know that it would be a "death sentence" for that day.

If your chances were 1 in 40 of dying that day while taking blood pressure medication, then not taking it would raise it to as high in 1 in 10 which may be very high, it is hardly a certainty.

So what am I missing there?

Ok so someone does something that increases the likelihood that you will die on a particular day by a factor of 400% and then you die. You see NO problem with that? Perhaps you play Russian Roulette by yourself daily. I see a BIG problem with that!

If by now you cannot connect the dots I am at a loss. Throughout this exchange all I have been asking is NOT to judge till we all know the facts.

The only thing we DO know is she didn't get her meds. Whether this caused the death or not is unknown. We also don't know how often she was observed or looked in at as in the case of Castro (complete scumbag that he was) they hadn't checked in well over 24 hours. I read the person who discovered her was I believe a nurse or aide taking BP of inmates and found her unresponsive. Most prisons have a guard who walks by every cell every hour or so looking on the inmates during rounds. On new arrivals here at Manci they even have cameras on them IIRC. Had a neighbour who worked there years ago. The first 72 hours or so of an inmate's new life in prison are normally monitored VERY closely. I don't see that this was done here. The very same prison just over a week ago had a new prisoner hang himself. The autopsy has already been released. But in this woman's case still we wait. They say is for toxicology tests which may very well be true.

My point is it sounds like someone did not do their job. At this point I don't really care if she was incarcerated for murder or what have you. This particular jail sounds like they throw you in there and so it goes. If you are ok with that then again I don't know what to say.

She had enough issues with no help, dead broke, and husband passing in 2011. We cannot hope to know everything that happened here. My opinion is the system failed miserably. Why? Well because she is dead, the children are parentless, and they didn't get their precious fund money. Seems now school funding is tied to student attendance (who cares if they actually learn anything but another subject entirely), and basically if you look at the fees for truancy it is for making up these missing funds to the school along with court costs, admin costs, etc. As always, money is the most important thing in this Godforsaken country. The US had a great start, but it is looking to be a miserable finish for it.

If it increased the odds of dying by 3 to 4 times and she died, then her odds of dying with the medication must have been pretty high. It's amazing that they would send someone that ill to jail.

I know in a case where I live there was a guy who was in very poor health who had to go to jail for something. The jail sent him home just as fast as they could because they didn't want the liability in case he happened to die. If I remember correctly, he actually did die within a year or two of that.



I saw one story that said that the autopsy has been finished and it is inconclusive as to the cause of death. I assume that one thing that the toxicology tests are looking for is the presence of other drugs, prescription or otherwise, that might have contributed to the death.



So who is jumping to conclusions?



More jumping to conclusions?

In Pennsylvania, does the school system get the truancy fines to make up for whatever funding they may have lost because of the absences? That would really surprise me.

If the school system does not receive the money from those fines and their accompanying fees, then your argument is severely lacking.