Luzerne County Council should use its investigative power under the county’s home rule charter to get to the bottom of three recent female inmate deaths and a rash of suicide attempts, county Councilwoman Kathy Dobash said Tuesday.
The customized home rule government, which took effect in 2012, gives council authority to study, audit and investigate matters “it determines are in the best interests of the county.”
Council has the power to administer oaths and issue subpoenas and can compel witnesses to attend meetings and produce documents and other evidence.
Seven of 11 council votes — a super majority — are required to exercise these powers, the charter states.
Two past proposals to conduct investigations had failed to receive seven votes — a 2014 idea to examine inflated senior citizen ridership counts at the county Transportation Authority and a 2015 suggestion to look into 911 concerns, including employee errors in which crews were dispatched to the wrong location for two emergencies in which people died.
County officials had argued the ridership issue already was part of a state probe. And council opted to create a temporary committee to examine 911 concerns instead of launching a full-blown investigation.
“Please, I do not request an ad hoc inquiry committee,” Dobash wrote Tuesday in an email to her council colleagues seeking an investigation. “That would be an insult.”
Dobash also has requested public discussion about prison reform, saying it should be “high priority.” Representatives of the county’s prison task force should attend the upcoming meeting to answer council questions about the issue, she said.
The task force, which meets privately, was established in September, primarily to address prison overcrowding that increases stress on both the county budget and correctional officers.
Creation of the committee stemmed largely from council’s call to increase prison oversight amid the July 2016 deaths of an inmate and corrections officer inside an elevator shaft and extortion charges against two prior employees in connection with work-release inmates.
Under home rule, the county manager oversees prison operations and selects a correctional services division head who must be confirmed by council.
Correctional Division Head Mark Rockovich said Tuesday he has asked mental health advocates to recommend inmate screening and monitoring protocol changes to better detect suicides. He said he has no problem with any investigation or constructive reviews.
“If council can provide any additional insight that mental health experts can’t provide, that would be fine. I’d love to know the reason for the suicides,” Rockovich said.
‘A lot of questions’
Inmate Tricia Cooper, 45, of Kingston Township, died at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital on Monday following an attempted suicide at the prison July 25, officials said. An autopsy is pending, but family members said she exhibited evidence of a hanging.
The June 8 death of inmate Brooke Griesing at the prison was ruled a suicide after an autopsy concluded she died of asphyxia due to hanging.
County officials suspect the July 7 death of inmate Joan Rosengrant was a suicide, but the coroner’s office is still awaiting toxicology results to determine a cause. Rosengrant was found unresponsive in her cell and later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Rockovich said his officers are vigilant about suicide prevention and initially believed they had detected Cooper’s death in time.
“At one point, they thought she’d be OK. They really feel bad about it,” Rockovich said.
In addition to the three deaths, there have been eight attempted suicides this year to date, prison statistics show. Seven inmates attempted suicide in 2016, compared to three inmate suicide tries in 2015.
Council Chairwoman Linda McClosky Houck said the subject will be on Tuesday’s work session agenda.
“We will start with discussion and see where it leads,” McClosky Houck said. “The incidence of three deaths within a short period of time certainly raises a lot of questions.”
