The Hinds County Sheriff’s Office withheld jail death records from a legal advocacy organization for nearly a year. Then a local judge ordered the sheriff to turn the records over by July 9. But nearly two weeks later, the Southern Poverty Law Center is still waiting.
The missed deadline is the latest instance of the county and the sheriff failing to produce jail death records, which the SPLC has been seeking since last summer to learn more about the number of people who’ve died in recent years at the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond.
“We’re just scratching our heads about why we don’t have the records,” said Andrea Alajbegovic, a senior staff attorney at the SPLC. “It’s a little confounding at this point.”…