215 bodies, known to the police, found in unmarked graves behind jail in Jackson, Mississippi
www.wsws.org
The families of those buried in the pauper’s field behind the Hinds County Penal Farm were never informed of the death of their loved ones.

Families were actively not informed of their loved ones deaths, and inmates were made to dig the holes and bury the bodies of the dead. This is getting massively underreported and happened earlier this month, I bet you haven’t heard about it.

  • jeffw@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    As this article discusses, it’s not “massively underreported,” it was in major news outlets last year. Pretty sure I even posted an article on Lemmy about it.

    What’s new is the scale is larger than initially reported.

    Edit: also important to note this isn’t a secret hidden burial ground. I’m not defending this shitty police work, but it’s a “left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.” I don’t think the coroner is to blame, the police should have been notifying the families in a timely fashion. No excuse to take months to tell them.

    Edit 2: finished the linked article and it’s very strange. They get their facts from established mainstream reporting, then accuse mainstream media of not covering the story well enough. My linked NBC article is pretty in-depth coverage. It spurred an entire series of articles on failed death reporting by police in the USA, with most articles in the series focusing on Jackson. In other words, the original linked article is just rage bait.

    • yokonzo@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      Well, you’ve made your case and I have to admit you may be right, this one threw me, my bad

      • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        Nah, you’re golden. I’m not the other guy you were talking to, but IMO, there is no error (even if there technically is) because the more people you get reading and talking about this, the better. Thank you for taking the time to post it.

        I’ve been thinking for quite some time now that there are far more criminals behind the bench than there are in front of it, and this newly revised number of police-ordered informal gravesites only serves to prove the point even further. (I’m using “the bench” as a symbol for the entire US justice system and not just corrupt judges, but you probably get my point.)