26-05-2025
‘Death County, PA' Episode 6: The ‘good old boys' club overseeing all the prison deaths
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The final episode of the podcast 'Death County, PA' begins to answer the question why so many people have been dying in a Pennsylvania county jail in recent years.
And one part of the answer is the people who were supposed to be providing critical oversight were part of a 'good old boys club,' where money and favors moved back and forth between the people running the prison and the people in charge of holding them accountable.
The same health care provider who has been accused of providing inadequate care at the Dauphin County Prison during some of the deaths, Prime Care, had not been audited by the county in three decades.
That's despite the fact that Prime Care had been banned from providing care in Pennsylvania's state prisons because of an incident where the owner of the company falsified records after a patient died of dehydration.
But Prime Care paid one of the three main people in charge of overseeing the jail, former County Commissioner Jeff Haste, more than half a million dollars over four years, income that Haste had not disclosed.
Haste also pushed the county to buy property from the same coroner, Graham Hetrick, whose conclusions about why prisoners were dying was being challenged by some of his peers and in the courts. Hetrick was allowing Haste to live in that very same property.
In the midst of all these revelations, the family of one of the most recent inmates to die, Justin Cofield, organized a protest at the prison.
'We demand answers,' Cofield's mom shouted at the protest. 'Shame on Dauphin County. Shame on every single person responsible for the death of so many people inside of this building here. Shame on them for the neglect of our children, of our parents, of our neighbors.'
During the protest, Cofield's parents confronted Hetrick — the coroner, who had done real estate business with the county and who was accused of creating autopsy reports that downplayed the responsibility of prison staff. Hetrick refused to let Cofield's parents see their own child's body.
'It does not belong to the prison. It does not belong to the county. It does not belong to Graham Hetrick,' one protester shouted.
What came out of the confrontation with Hetrick that day highlighted the longtime effort by advocates to bring change to a prison where, experts from UCLA recently concluded, the coroner's office seemed to be misclassifying deaths and where Black prisoners in particular were facing higher levels of violence than white prisoners.
'Death County, PA' is co-produced by PennLive and Wondery and hit the top of Apple's podcast charts two days after it was widely released. A new episode has been released every week, with episode 6 being the final one.
Wondery has developed a number of award-winning, long-form podcast series, some of which have gone on to be produced into TV series.
Wondery created the series in collaboration with PennLive, a news site run by Advance Local, one of the largest media groups in the United States, operating in 20 cities.
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Read the original article on MassLive.
