LEMON DROP | Why Are U.S. Prisoners Dying?
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What pattern of inmate deaths does Death County PA investigate?
At the center of each episode of the new podcast, Death County PA is a dead body. In each episode, a young man enters a Dauphin County prison in Pennsylvania, perfectly healthy, perfectly fine. But they leave in critical condition and then they die in nearby hospitals. What is going on? Local authorities said their deaths were the result of medical incidents or that it wasn't clear how they died. But why then did some bodies have so much bruising? Why were their teeth missing? So many questions. PennLive reporter Josh Vaughn spent years looking into the dead bodies that kept piling up in the notorious Dauphin County prison. And he partnered with the city council official Lamont Jones to shed light on what he found.
Today, I'm thrilled to chat with journalist Josh Vaughn and city council official Lamont Jones. Gentlemen, thank you both for joining. Appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Josh, how did you come upon this story from the Dauphin County prison?
So I joined PennLive in November of 2021, and it became pretty clear pretty early on that there were issues at the jail. Just hearing about people dying, it wasn't long after I joined that Jamal Crummel, who's at the center of our third episode of the podcast, died in the middle of the winter from what turns out to be hypothermia. So it became pretty apparent pretty quickly that there were things going on at Dauphin County that went beyond just one or two bad actors but involved systemic and long-standing issues of potential corruption, of just lack of care for the people in their custody, neglect, abuse, all that sort of stuff. And I wanted to know more.
Do you know what it reminded me of? Have you heard of the Dozier, the school for boys, the reform school in Florida, where they kept either disappearing, dying, being injured or whatever? It's a very similar story to me. And just as a frightening one, Josh.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. At this point, we're at 22 people who have died at Dauphin County Prison since the beginning of 2019. We're not talking anywhere to the scale, the size of the jail of like an LA County or Rikers Island. It's a relatively small facility and people keep dying. And again, it's every time we kind of dive into it, There's something either missing in what the officials said about what happened to the person, or you can really kind of point to, you know, we should have caught something here. We should have caught something there. And then what are we doing to prevent this from happening to the next person? And the answers seem to be, at least officially, very little to nothing, which is beyond frustrating.
Lamont, you are a former Dauphin County prison inmate.
What was your experience like there? Oh, how much time do we have? No. I was a very young man when I first got incarcerated, so it was an experience. But I did maybe a couple stints in that prison, and I realized quickly that there was a culture there. with the guards and how they treated you. There was always some type of physical altercation with the guards. If you got into an altercation with a guard on one shift, they wouldn't touch you on that shift. it would be another shift that comes in. And then that would be the shift to come in and get physical with you. You know, no charges were filed, none of that. You know, so it became kind of like commonplace for us. So, you know, it was almost like a normal thing.
And that's sad to say, you know, but that was the kind of experience that I had there. It was just always a tough place to serve time at. Not that anyone... Go ahead.
It became normal.
It was just a normal... This is how it goes. Yeah.
Yeah.
You knew people who were injured, hurt, or died?
Yeah. My cousin was actually one of them, Tyreek Riley. I knew Jamal Cromwell. I knew Herb Tillman. It was a bunch of guys that I knew growing up with, and they ended up passing away in that prison.
So when, if they ended up passing away in the prison, I'm sure people did, no one did anything about it?
How did journalist Josh Vaughn first uncover problems at Dauphin County Prison?
Did their family members, loved ones, anybody go to the authorities and said, hey, you guys need to check, need to look into this?
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