Editor’s note: This story contains details of suicides in the Bibb County Jail and may be disturbing to some readers. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those who want to help someone else. Call 988 to speak with a trained listener or visit 988lifeline.org for crisis chat services or more information.

Dakota Smithers was booked at the Bibb County Jail in January 2020 on loitering charges, a misdemeanor.

He was found dead in custody the next month.

The 25-year-old who was arrested for harassing customers while sitting on the curb in a Macon establishment, according to an incident report, died by suicide on Feb. 10, 2020, in the jail after repeatedly showing signs of suicidal ideations. Jail records show he was twice taken to the infirmary because he was suffering from depression, exhibited antisocial behavior and showed suicidal intentions.

Nine people died in Macon’s jail while being held as inmates from 2020 to 2024, with four of them being suicides, according to data from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office. Two others were classified as homicides, and three occurred due to natural causes, according to documents obtained by The Telegraph through Georgia’s open records law.

Two inmates have died at the jail this year, but the cause of their deaths was unclear as of publication.

The Bibb County Jail has a capacity of just under 1,000 people, according to the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office. Four deaths by suicide in a jail with a population of about 1,000 inmates over five years is uncommonly high for recent decades, according to data from Reuters obtained between 2000 and 2019 in Georgia, the most recent available comprehensive data.

With suicides the leading cause of death in Macon’s jail, families of victims question whether the handful of incidents could have been prevented.

Can jail officers prevent more suicides?

Dakota Smithers’ family sued over his death in November 2021, alleging jail staff didn’t find his body until two hours after he died despite the fact that a jailer, Ta’Tanisha Tweedy, was monitoring cameras near Smithers’ cell. The lawsuit was filed against the deputy jailer and the operator of the jail infirmary, CorrectHealth, as well as some of its employees. The case against the jail staffer was dismissed, but the family settled its case against CorrectHealth.

The jail officer’s attorneys argued Tweedy was entitled to immunity as a government employee and that her duty to monitor the cameras was discretionary rather than administrative. Because the jailer’s orders to “monitor and control” do not specify a requirement to watch the monitors, the judge declared that the jailer had a discretionary duty, was entitled to immunity, and dismissed the lawsuit.

But the Smithers family disagreed and has filed an appeal.

“The question to be decided is whether a county jailer’s duty to monitor security video screens at her workstation was a ministerial or discretionary duty when she failed to notice an inmate hanging himself on camera for over two hours,” the family’s attorneys wrote in an appeal.

The appeal says Tweedy was alone in the control booth watching cameras for much of the day, even though it’s required that two staffers monitor the cameras. Dakota Smithers appeared to be unresponsive in video footage just before noon, but was found at 2:19 p.m.

‘An ongoing issue’

Another man in the jail, Troyce Billingslea, died by suicide on Sept. 3, 2023, after his “cries for help were ignored,” according to a lawsuit filed on Jan. 7. It indicated that Billingslea had openly expressed suicidal ideation, which concerned other inmates enough to call in Kendra Orange, a nurse working for the infirmary at the jail.

Orange checked on him but didn’t question Billingslea further after he told the nurse he was fine and just wanted to “get out of his cell,” according to the report referenced in the lawsuit.

Inmates found Billingslea’s body after he died. They yelled for help. Jail staff performed chest compressions but couldn’t save him, according to court documents.

The lawsuit alleges that staff performed cell checks at 8:20 and 9:11 a.m. that day, but Billingslea was found dead by noon.

The suit, filed by Marlena Henderson as the guardian of Billingslea’s children, features a letter from a detention officer who says a lack of staff causes employees not to follow policy, and inmates aren’t supervised as often as required.

“Despite his repeated expressions of suicidal ideation, witnessed by inmates and reported to staff, those responsible for his safety failed him at every turn,” Henderson’s lawsuit says. “The medical professional dismissed his vulnerability, the jailers neglected their duty to check on him and the leadership allowed the jail to remain dangerously understaffed.”

Henderson sued Bibb County Sheriff David Davis, Orange, other staff at the sheriff’s office, and CorrectHealth.

Steve Smithers, Dakota Smithers’ father, told The Telegraph he didn’t even know his son was in Macon until deputies at the jail informed him of his son’s death. Dakota Smithers’ family lives in Savannah, so Steve Smithers found the news of his death in Bibb County shocking.

Dakota Smithers was the oldest son of the family, and his father expected him to follow in his footsteps of being a trucker, but he never got the chance. He exhibited symptoms of schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder, Steve Smithers said, but was never officially diagnosed or treated for it.

Steve Smithers told The Telegraph that the deaths of his son and Billingslea were similar — both attempted to get help, but were denied.

“This seems to be an ongoing issue,” Steve Smithers said.

Dakota Smithers’ mother handled the proceedings of cremating his body. His urn wasn’t delivered to the family until two years later, when Steve Smithers called the coroner’s office, who sent them Dakota Smithers’ remains in about a week.

‘The wider story ... in US jails’

The four inmates who died by suicide had histories of drug abuse and untreated mental health issues, according to autopsy reports from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and wrongful death lawsuits filed by their families in court.

Jessica Adler, a professor at Florida International University who studies jail mortality data, said Macon’s issues “encapsulate the wider story about what’s going on in U.S. jails.”

“The rate of suicide in jail is much higher than the national average (outside jails),” Adler said. “So when we’re talking about deaths in jail, we’re often talking about suicide.”

Adler, who studied jail mortality alongside an economics professor at Kennesaw State University, Weiwei Chen, found that the higher the rate of inmate turnover, the higher the likelihood of deaths. Population size, demographics and health care management also contribute to the death rate, especially suicide, in jails, according to their study.

Alison Ganem, an attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights, said inmates and detainees in custody are likely to have more serious physical and mental health needs than people not in custody. Inmates in jails are five times more likely than those not in custody to have a severe mental illness, while two-thirds of inmates have a substance abuse disorder, according to Ganem.

The issues typically don’t get treated while someone is detained, because “jails just are not and do not equal mental health treatment,” she said.

“Most of the staff at jails are correctional officers,” Ganem said. “They’re guards. They’re not trained social workers or trained mental health providers.”

Jail conditions can “exacerbate” issues and “lead people to experience very, very serious mental health crises,” Ganem said. Unbearable heat or cold, lack of access to good food and clean water, lack of time outside and more can harm inmates mentally. Ganem also said solitary confinement inmates face a “torturous” experience.

Ganem also said jail officers can mischaracterize inmates who are suicidal, thinking they’re just trying to get attention. That’s not an accurate assumption, Ganem said.

Adler and Ganem referenced data by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which shows that 24% to 35% of inmate deaths were suicides from 2001 to 2019 in U.S. jails.

The BJS also highlighted:

• Unconvicted inmates accounted for close to 77% of those who died by suicide in local jails

• 66% of local jail suicides between 2015 and 2019 occurred within the first 30 days of incarceration, while 44% occurred within the first week

• Between 2010 and 2019, close to 14% of inmates who died by suicide had at least one overnight stay in a mental health services unit since entering jail

• 73% of suicides occurred in the inmate’s cell and 8% were in jail segregation units.

What can be done?

Both experts said the best way to combat the risk of suicide among inmates in local jails is to have fewer people held in jail before they go to trial.

“Policymakers should resist devoting more funding to incarceration,” Adler and Chen said in their study. “Instead, they should curtail pretrial detention and provide access to noncarceral community-based social supports, such as mental health and addiction treatment.”

Even though the infirmary unit at the Bibb County Jail is managed by CorrectHealth, therapists who regularly talk to inmates at the jail are employed by River Edge Behavioral Health. The infirmary is there 24/7, while River Edge is primarily an outpatient clinic, so both entities collaborate to treat struggling inmates, Frederica McClary-Myers, the chief clinical officer for River Edge, told The Telegraph.

She and her team often talk to inmates who say that upon being booked into the jail, they feel a lot of anxiety about what’s next, especially when they go to court, talk to their public defender or attorney, or visit family members outside of the jail.

If an incarcerated person starts showing suicidal ideation, staff for the jail, CorrectHealth or River Edge are alerted and a clinician then assesses them. Depending on the results of the assessment, it triggers subsequent services, such as being given medication or being seen by a nurse practitioner, a group facilitator or their case manager.

They are isolated in the infirmary, so there’s constant observation from staff. In more severe cases, they’re transported to a hospital.

Therapy is also an option. But because the jail is not a state-mandated facility, it is not required for inmates who don’t consent to it, even if they have a visible need for it, McClary-Myers said.

Because of setbacks like these, among other things, experts say that jails aren’t appropriate mental health facilities.

Davis, the Bibb County sheriff, agrees with the sentiment.

He says that because mental health hospitals are closing down, it falls back on the jail to take care of these inmates. And if they have committed a crime, “they have to be detained somewhere,” he told The Telegraph.

This story was originally published May 7, 2025 at 10:35 AM.

Alba Rosa

The Telegraph

Alba Rosa, from Puerto Rico, is a local courts reporter for The Telegraph in Macon, Georgia. She studied journalism at Florida International University in Miami, Florida where she graduated Magna Cum Laude in December 2023. Other than journalism, she likes to make art, write and produce music and delve into the fashion world.