Relatives of Price claim wrongful death lawsuit Price, who was incarcerated and suffered from severe mental illness due to negligence by prison staff and its private medical contractors, was sentenced to a year in pretrial detention, filed Friday in federal court in Arkansas. Allowed to starve to death over more than 100,000 times.
Sebastian County Jail administrators said in a statement Friday that medical personnel were available to treat inmates in need of care and that they were conducting an internal review of Price’s case.Turn Key Health Clinics representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this complaint.
For Price’s family, Price’s death is especially hard. It begins with the decision to put a man with schizophrenia into a system that was not designed to treat him, and without trial he would be held for a year that could easily be avoided. Because. $100 bail that he couldn’t pay. The affliction, they said, was the dozens of prison logs suggesting that no one had seen or cared for him after he was dead, even after he was dead. It is exacerbated by details such as logs that continue to list
Family attorney Eric Hypt, an attorney with Seattle-based Budge and Heipt, which specializes in wrongful deaths and police brutality, has been handling those cases for nearly 20 years. Says it’s one of the worst.
Price is among the 1,200 people known to have died in the local prison. According to 2019 figures from Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Justice2022 Senate Subcommittee on Investigations The report showed that the numbers were significantly undercountedand watchdogs, reform groups, and lawmakers have noted long-standing problems with collecting accurate data.
Although the details of Price’s case are more peculiar — his autopsy lists his cause of death as “acute dehydration and malnutrition” — the prison and the broader criminal justice system have determined that detainees, particularly We struggle with how to address the health needs of people with mental illness.
“The important point is that Larry Price was never put in prison,” Hypt said, claiming that Price was “incarcerated because he essentially had a mental health crisis.”
In August 2020, Price walked into a police station in Fort Smith, Arkansas and began acting erratic, according to the complaint.
Family members said he was well known to those in the community, traveling between shelters and sometimes visiting his aunt who lived in the area for meals and showers. The brother had called him to check on his whereabouts. They said he was well known to the local police as well, as officers often found Price, who had schizophrenia and had a mental health crisis.
According to the lawsuit, on that day, officers decided it was in his best interest to take him to prison.
His bail was set at $1,000, so he had to post only $100 for his release, and he didn’t have the money. He spent the next year mostly in solitary confinement and in prison until his death in August 2021.
Price’s family said they couldn’t find him and began to worry when he didn’t show up at his aunt’s house in Fort Smith. They were unaware that he was imprisoned. Iris Price said that when she called the detention center to ask if he was there, the staff did not check his condition or allow Price to leave any information and asked to be contacted to connect. Said it had to be taken.
Sebastian County Jail did not answer questions about Price’s allegations or clarify protocols for next of kin seeking to share information with detainees.
Prison and health records obtained by The Washington Post, which include interviews with prison officials after Price’s death, show that Price repeatedly exhibited signs of acute mental health problems. . he refuses to take his medication.
About five months after being detained, Price requested medical attention because he was “ill and had lost a lot of weight,” according to the complaint. Prison and health department staff noticed that Price was noticeably thinner, and he lost more than 30 pounds since taking it. But even as he continued to lose weight and behaved more erratically, Price was not transferred to a facility that could care for his specific mental health and physical needs.
Due to his mental health problems, Price spent the better part of a year in pretrial detention in an isolated residence where health checks were required every 15 minutes. Heipt said prison officials falsified reports and did not check on him or ignored his deteriorating condition.
According to the complaint, between August 1 and August 29, 2021, staff logged over 4,000 entries for safety checks and died with the same entry, “Inmate and Cell OK.” After Price was pronounced dead, he had 10 more identical entries recorded.
Timothy Edgemon, an assistant professor of sociology and criminology who studies corrections at Auburn University, said the corrections system has established standards of care for detainees and prisoners. But often the best path starts by keeping severely mentally ill patients away from systems that were not designed to serve them in the first place.
Unlike prisons, which hold people for long periods of time while serving their sentences, prisons often, like Price, have not been convicted of anything, but are poor and pay bail while they wait a day in court. It’s full of people who can’t afford it. Also, unlike state and federal prisons, long-term medical care mandates in local prisons are vague and underresourced.
“The main problem that county jails always encounter is their inability to handle those types of cases from the start. [like Price],” Edgemon said. “An ideal system would require a separate space designed to handle people in need.”
Rural prisons are not particularly equipped to deal with mentally ill patients, Edgemon added. In the past decade, some jurisdictions have established so-called mental health courts that allow courts to identify forms of treatment not normally available in local prison systems.
Haupt, Price’s attorney, said the case “represents all the problems of the cash bail system when it comes to punishing the poor.”
Heipt also criticized local prisons for relying on private medical companies to care for inmates. He cited past instances where companies have reduced operating costs by understaffing or not stationing key personnel.
“A large part of it is about money, and if the people you’re in charge basically see inmates as dollar signs, it’s a system doomed to failure,” Heipt said.
The complaint alleges that the staff’s actions violated Price’s constitutional rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and seeks a jury trial.
Price’s family hopes the lawsuit will provide answers. Iris Price is a nurse and Rodney Price is a former corrections officer from California.
“It was negligent. This shouldn’t have happened,” said Iris Price. She added that the Sebastian County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the prison, has done nothing wrong to her family since Larry’s death in August 2021. “But especially when it involves someone struggling with mental health.”
