Two girls die at Wisconsin’s Taycheedah jail

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Two girls incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Establishment have died following hospital stays that started Feb. 22.

Relations of each girls say hospital workers linked the deaths to pneumonia. They mentioned each girls began mentioning well being points over the telephone round a month in the past.

Corrections officers briefly locked down a part of Taycheedah resulting from a rise in respiratory sicknesses.

Two girls incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Establishment have died following hospital stays that started Feb. 22. The Wisconsin Division of Corrections has shared restricted details about their deaths, irritating members of the family and people locked up on the maximum- and medium-security girls’s jail.

Shawnee Reed, 36, died Feb. 23, a day after arriving at an space hospital. Brittany Doescher, 33, died Thursday after spending practically two weeks on life assist, based on an internet corrections database and members of the family.

Each girls have been moms, members of the family mentioned.

Two prisoners at Taycheedah instructed Wisconsin Watch and WPR {that a} third incarcerated lady was hospitalized across the similar time as Reed and Doescher. The net corrections database exhibits the lady they recognized was “out to facility” on Feb. 23. She returned to Taycheedah in the identical week.

Reed and Doescher’s official causes of dying are pending, mentioned Dr. Adam Covach, Fond du Lac County’s chief health worker. Relations of each girls say hospital workers linked the deaths to pneumonia. Reed and Doescher’s family members requested to not be recognized to keep away from drawing extra consideration to their households.

Doescher’s relative mentioned she discovered of Doescher’s hospitalization two days after it started. She arrived to seek out Doescher chained to a mattress with blisters round her ankles.

Shawnee Reed, 36, proper, poses together with her son. Picture was blurred for privateness. (Courtesy of the Reed household)

Following discussions with docs, Doescher’s member of the family believes earlier remedy might have prevented the dying, significantly as a result of she was so younger.

Requested in regards to the deaths, division spokesperson Beth Hardtke wrote in an electronic mail to WPR and Wisconsin Watch: “The federal Facilities for Illness Management is seeing ‘excessive’ numbers of respiratory sickness instances in Wisconsin, and the Division of Corrections (DOC) is taking a lot of steps to forestall the unfold of respiratory sicknesses to workers and individuals in our care.”

Individuals incarcerated at Wisconsin prisons, together with Taycheedah, have been not too long ago examined and handled for Influenza A, Hardtke added.

Family members mentioned each girls began mentioning well being points over the telephone round a month in the past.

Questions in regards to the sicknesses are swirling throughout the jail. Three incarcerated girls instructed WPR and Wisconsin Watch they discovered Reed had died however heard completely different variations of the trigger.

Corrections officers locked down a part of Taycheedah — limiting prisoner motion — on Feb. 28. That was resulting from a rise in respiratory sicknesses, based on an inner memo from Warden Michael Gierach. The division lifted the lockdown Thursday.

Wisconsin usually prices prisoners a $7.50 copay for every face-to-face medical go to, among the many highest within the nation. Citing the surge of respiratory visits, the division lifted copays for visits starting Feb. 28, 5 days after Reed died.

“DOC well being care workers not too long ago reminded workers and people in our care of the way to guard themselves as influenza, COVID-19, pneumonia and RSV proceed to flow into,” Hardtke wrote.

The prisons are offering vaccines, masks and cleaning soap for normal hand washing, Hardtke added. Anybody who checks constructive for a respiratory sickness is quarantined for no less than seven days.

Whereas girls at Taycheedah did obtain details about respiratory sickness precautions, the division shared no particulars in regards to the hospitalizations and deaths, mentioned Kady Mehaffey, who’s incarcerated.

“Which is form of maddening due to the quantity of individuals which can be filling within the blanks about what occurred,” Mehaffey mentioned.

The division didn’t publicly announce the ladies’s deaths, which WPR and Wisconsin Watch discovered about from girls incarcerated on the facility.

On-line information confirmed the ladies had died however little different data. The division has since offered fundamental data, together with the ladies’s names, ages, dying dates, and that they died in an “space hospital.”

States together with Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska publicly announce prisoner deaths, sharing the particular person’s title, jail, the place they died, and in some instances, particulars associated to their reason behind dying.

Wisconsin will not be the one state to restrict the discharge of such particulars, however doing so is problematic, mentioned Michele Deitch, director of the Jail and Jail Innovation Lab on the College of Texas at Austin.

“There’s no higher duty that prisons have than protecting the folks inside secure and alive and when there’s a failure to try this the general public has a proper to know,” Deitch mentioned.

Hardtke wrote that her division follows finest practices to guard the privateness of people who find themselves incarcerated and their households. What’s extra, it’s as much as county coroners or health workers to analyze causes of deaths.

The Division of Corrections does verify deaths and launch names after household is notified, however the division can’t launch different particulars, together with reason behind dying, due to privateness legal guidelines, Hardtke mentioned.

Deitch mentioned jail methods typically interpret privateness legal guidelines broadly after which level to such protections to justify withholding data.

Whereas the division updates its on-line database to notice prisoner deaths, somebody searching for details about a dying would first have to know the prisoner’s title. That database was used to substantiate the March 4 dying of a prisoner at Waupun Correctional Establishment — Damien Evans, the seventh Waupun prisoner to die in custody since June 2023.

Fourteen prisoners residing at Wisconsin’s grownup establishments have died this yr, Hardtke wrote. The prisons noticed 61 deaths in all of 2024 and 54 deaths in 2023.

Reed and Doescher each participated in a program to assist with substance abuse and facilitate an early launch, based on family members and court docket paperwork. Doescher anticipated her launch inside months, her relative mentioned.

“She hoped to come back residence and begin her personal enterprise,” the relative mentioned. “She wished to counsel different women in conditions like her.”

Each Reed and Doescher loved jewellery making whereas at Taycheedah.

“I don’t know the way (Reed) did it, however she would get like thread and threaded round like a plastic piece or one thing like that and she or he might make these actually cool designs,” Mehaffey mentioned. “She was good with the small intricate issues.”

Each girls have kids.

“We’re going to overlook her and I actually hope the jail system might be reformed as a result of there’s no name for this,” Doescher’s member of the family mentioned. “I really feel for every other father or mother that has to undergo this.”