From the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting and reporter R.G. Dunlop, the story of dangerously subpar health care for prisoners in Kentucky.
An excerpt: “Jails buy medical care they can afford. Companies like Southern Health Partners make a profit. But promised and required services are not always provided. Inmates suffer as a result. And virtually no one is doing anything about it.”
Part two of the series examines the state’s role: “DOC (Department of Corrections) rarely probes deeply when a jail inmate dies. And it apparently has not sanctioned a single jail in connection with the more than 140 inmate deaths that have occurred during the past five-and-a-half years.”
A Lexington Herald Leader editorial called the findings “horrific… political expediency is no excuse in the face of unnecessary deaths, costly legal settlements and insults to our concept of basic human rights.”