Taycheedah Correctional Institution, a maximum- and medium-security women’s prison, is seen on Aug. 29, 2024, in Fond du Lac, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections offers few details about the deaths, which coincided with a respiratory illness outbreak.
Two women incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional Institution have died following hospital stays that began Feb. 22. The Wisconsin Department of Corrections has shared limited information about their deaths, frustrating family members and those locked up at the maximum- and medium-security women’s prison.
Shawnee Reed, 36, died Feb. 23, a day after arriving at an area hospital. Brittany Doescher, 33, died Thursday after spending nearly two weeks on life support, according to an online corrections database and family members.
Both women were mothers, family members said.
Two prisoners at Taycheedah told Wisconsin Watch and WPR that a third incarcerated woman was hospitalized around the same time as Reed and Doescher. The online corrections database shows the woman they identified was “out to facility” on Feb. 23. She returned to Taycheedah in the same week.
Reed and Doescher’s official causes of death are pending, said Dr. Adam Covach, Fond du Lac County’s chief medical examiner. Family members of both women say hospital staff linked the deaths to pneumonia. Reed and Doescher’s relatives asked not to be identified to avoid drawing more attention to their families.
Doescher’s relative said she learned of Doescher’s hospitalization two days after it began. She arrived to find Doescher chained to a bed with blisters around her ankles.
Following discussions with doctors, Doescher’s family member believes earlier treatment could have prevented the death, particularly because she was so young.
Asked about the deaths, department spokesperson Beth Hardtke wrote in an email to WPR and Wisconsin Watch: “The federal Centers for Disease Control is seeing ‘high’ numbers of respiratory illness cases in Wisconsin, and the Department of Corrections (DOC) is taking a number of steps to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses to staff and persons in our care.”
People incarcerated at Wisconsin prisons, including Taycheedah, were recently tested and treated for Influenza A, Hardtke added.
Relatives said both women started mentioning health issues over the phone around a month ago.
Questions about the illnesses are swirling within the prison. Three incarcerated women told WPR and Wisconsin Watch they learned Reed had died but heard different versions of the cause.
Corrections officials locked down part of Taycheedah — limiting prisoner movement — on Feb. 28. That was due to an increase in respiratory illnesses, according to an internal memo from Warden Michael Gierach. The department lifted the lockdown Thursday.
Wisconsin typically charges prisoners a $7.50 copay for each face-to-face medical visit, among the highest in the country. Citing the surge of respiratory visits, the department lifted copays for visits beginning Feb. 28, five days after Reed died.
“DOC health care staff recently reminded employees and those in our care of ways to protect themselves as influenza, COVID-19, pneumonia and RSV continue to circulate,” Hardtke wrote.
The prisons are providing vaccines, masks and soap for regular hand washing, Hardtke added. Anyone who tests positive for a respiratory illness is quarantined for at least seven days.
While women at Taycheedah did receive information about respiratory illness precautions, the department shared no details about the hospitalizations and deaths, said Kady Mehaffey, who is incarcerated.
“Which is kind of maddening because of the amount of people that are filling in the blanks about what happened,” Mehaffey said.
The department did not publicly announce the women’s deaths, which WPR and Wisconsin Watch learned about from women incarcerated at the facility.
Online records showed the women had died but little other information. The department has since provided basic information, including the women’s names, ages, death dates, and that they died in an “area hospital.”
States including Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska publicly announce prisoner deaths, sharing the person’s name, prison, where they died, and in some cases, details related to their cause of death.
Wisconsin is not the only state to limit the release of such details, but doing so is problematic, said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.
“There’s no greater responsibility that prisons have than keeping the people inside safe and alive and when there’s a failure to do that the public has a right to know,” Deitch said.
Hardtke wrote that her department follows best practices to protect the privacy of people who are incarcerated and their families. What’s more, it’s up to county coroners or medical examiners to investigate causes of deaths.
The Department of Corrections does confirm deaths and release names after family is notified, but the department can’t release other details, including cause of death, because of privacy laws, Hardtke said.
Deitch said prison systems often interpret privacy laws broadly and then point to such protections to justify withholding information.
While the department updates its online database to note prisoner deaths, someone seeking information about a death would first need to know the prisoner’s name. That database was used to confirm the March 4 death of a prisoner at Waupun Correctional Institution — Damien Evans, the seventh Waupun prisoner to die in custody since June 2023.
Fourteen prisoners residing at Wisconsin’s adult institutions have died this year, Hardtke wrote. The prisons saw 61 deaths in all of 2024 and 54 deaths in 2023.
Reed and Doescher both participated in a program to help with substance abuse and facilitate an early release, according to relatives and court documents. Doescher expected her release within months, her relative said.
“She was hoping to come home and start her own business,” the relative said. “She wanted to counsel other girls in situations like her.”
Both Reed and Doescher enjoyed jewelry making while at Taycheedah.
“I don’t know how (Reed) did it, but she would get like thread and threaded around like a plastic piece or something like that and she could make these really cool designs,” Mehaffey said. “She was good with the small intricate things.”
Both women have children.
“We’re going to miss her and I certainly hope the prison system can be reformed because there’s no call for this,” Doescher’s family member said. “I feel for any other parent that has to go through this.”
This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.