Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. Senate lawmakers failed to act on a bill that called for more oversight of prison deaths. On Wednesday, the last day for action on bills originating from the other chamber, House Bill 1739 did not come up for a vot e. The legislation was inspired by an investigation by Missisisppi Today, The Marshall-Project Jackson, the Clarion Ledger, the Hattiesburg American and The Mississippi Link. Rep. Becky Currie, a Brookhaven Republican who filed the prison death oversight legislation and chairs the House Corrections Committee, has told lawmakers that people continue to die in prison and their cause of death remains unknown, regardless if it was by homicide, accidental drug overdose, suicide or lack of access to health care.  “There is no way of making a plan to stop increases in deaths if we do not know or keep up with what is going on,” she said before the bill died on the calendar.  Currie said internal investigations into prison deaths don’t always take place or are incomplete, so the bill would have provided desperately needed data.  Senate Corrections Chairman Juan Barnett had said he planned to review the prison death task force legislation before bringing it up for a vote in his committee, saying prison deaths are something that needs to be looked into more.  “More oversight, more transparency for the public so they can feel more comfortable and know that if something happens, somebody will be on top of it to make sure that we don’t have any bad actors,” he said.  The Heidelberg Democrat has been out of the Capitol recovering from an illness, leaving Vice Chairwoman Lydia Chassaniol, a Winona Republican, in charge. She said Barnett only requested two bills be passed in committee: HB 1739 and HB 1444, which would give protective equipment to prisoners working with harmful chemicals, including those that can cause cancer. HB 1444 advanced Wednesday.  But Chassaniol passed on bringing up the prison deaths oversight bill before the full Senate when it came up on the calendar.  The bill would have directed and empowered the existing Corrections and Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force to look into “unexpected” deaths, which would have included those not related to a previously diagnosed or serious terminal illness. Under Currie’s bill, the task force would have been required to release a public report describing its findings and recommendations to try to prevent future deaths. Currie proposed prison death oversight in response to an investigation by the news outlets. Prison understaffing and gang violence likely led to the killings of nearly 50 people since 2015, the news team found. Eight resulted in criminal convictions. At least 20 deaths remain undetermined.  Family members of people killed in prison said they received little information from prison officials, and instead had more luck learning from a whisper network of incarcerated people, insiders, advocates, and, in some cases, from journalists.  Weeks after the news investigation, prison Commissioner Burl Cain told a legislative budget committee and Mississippi Today that the department would review unprosecuted homicides and deaths ruled as undetermined.  But five months later, there have been no new indictments or convictions in open homicide cases. Currie’s bill would have also added members to the task force, including the chairs of the House and Senate Corrections committees, the Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency committees and the public safety commissioner or a designee.  Currently, much of the task force representation is from Department of Corrections staff members, leading to a situation where “MDOC is reviewing themselves,” Currie said. Reporters Jerry Mitchell and Michael Goldberg contributed to this report.  ...read more read less