We’ve said it several times but unfortunately we’ve reported deaths in Valdosta State Prison even more times.

The people of Georgia have the right and need to know what is going on behind prison walls in our state.

The public has the right to know about deaths happening inside its state prisons.

Even more, families have the right to know how their inmate family members died inside of Georgia’s prisons.

Like so many other recent deaths in Valdosta State Prison, The Valdosta Daily Times and the public learned of the death of Kristopher Clayton Sweat, a 32-year-old inmate at the prison, because a family member reached out to the newspaper.

Specifically, his mother let The Times know her son died and that she has been unable to get any answers regarding his death.

Georgia Department of Corrections officials informed the mother of Sweat’s death but didn’t answer any of her questions.

Corrections officials no longer have to issue public statements about an inmate’s death.

So The Times – and the public – weren’t aware of another death at Valdosta State Prison until Sweat’s mother informed the newspaper and a reporter requested information specifically about Sweat’s death.

The newspaper has run into this situation several times in the past couple of years.

As we have previously reported at just one prison in the system — Valdosta State Prison — there were at least six inmate deaths in 2022 alone. However, prison officials did not independently report those deaths. Instead, it took a blanket open records request filed by the newspaper to even find out a single death had occurred.

In other words, to uncover that someone has died inside the prison, you either have to know or at least suspect an inmate has died, know the time frame in which the death occurred and the prison where it happened in order to even begin the process of uncovering deaths occurring inside prison walls.

So unless family members, or someone else, doesn’t make the information public or share it with the media, the public has no way of knowing if a death or deaths have occurred in a prison. And there have sadly been numerous deaths inside Valdosta State Prison the past few years. Just look at the list of names in the report about Kristopher Clayton Sweat’s death in the Sunday, Aug. 27, edition of The Valdosta Daily Times.

And as much as the public has a right and a need to know what’s happening inside of a prison in the community, family members have a right to as much information about their relative’s death as possible.

Too often family members of inmates are treated like criminals whenever they visit a relative behind bars or seek information about a relative in prison.

Family members were not convicted of a crime. They are not inmates. They are people with a relative in prison and they have a right to know what happens or what happened to their loved one.

Sheila Grantham of Jesup, the mother of Kristopher Clayton Sweat, should have the right to know what happened to her son.

And South Georgia residents should have the right to know what’s happening at a prison inside of our community.