Editorial: A death in county prison is public information, in real time
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Government often seems to have the same attitude toward transparency that children do toward report cards.
When a kid gets a good grade, it is turned over promptly and with lots of fanfare. Look how good this is! Look at my gold star! Can I have cookie?
When a kid gets a bad grade, it is a different story entirely. The paper gets closed in the back pages of a book. Pushed down in the backpack. Left in the locker. When Mom asks for it, the mumbled responses are “I don’t remember” or “I can’t find it.”
Anyone who has requested a document from a government agency has been in a similar situation. The information might be open to the public, but obtaining information that is supposed to be freely available is usually a struggle.
And things that are bad are rarely volunteered.
Let’s take the recent suicide of a woman at the Westmoreland County Prison.
Linda Kay Quidetto, 43, of Sharon, Mercer County, had been in jail awaiting trial as an accomplice in the 2017 death of Matthew Genard, 50, of Youngwood. She was pronounced dead in the emergency room at Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital in Greensburg.
Her death did not happen this week or this month. It didn’t even happen this year. She died Dec. 11.
The county announced nothing when the death occurred. It came to light only when the charges against her officially were dismissed by Court of Common Pleas Judge Christopher Feliciani on March 23, and that document was filed two days later.
“The prison followed normal procedures upon learning of the inmate’s passing. Out of respect for the inmate and her family, no further information can be released,” Warden Bryan Kline said in a statement when asked.
“We are not hiding anything,” Commissioner Chairman Sean Kertes said.
These are not answers of accountability. They are the answers of obfuscation.
The prison has been in flux in recent months, with Kertes even pointing to the change in leadership that brought Kline into his position in February and the added burden of a covid-19 outbreak around the time of the suicide.
These are not reasons to keep information from being shared. They are reasons transparency is important.
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections issues press releases when an inmate dies. It may note circumstances such as suicide or natural causes without overt invasion of privacy for either the deceased or the family. Why is that harder for a county facility?
The answer is that it shouldn’t be. County leaders should be as open about something like a jailhouse death as they are about receiving a grant or cutting a ribbon. To do less is childish.