The state Correction Department said Harrison Flanery, 48, was found unresponsive in his cell Sunday afternoon at the Tucker Unit and pronounced dead shortly after. State Police have been asked to investigate the death.

It has become difficult to keep track of the unexplained deaths in prison units, with three at Tucker in the last couple of weeks. The prison system has also not been forthcoming about what’s been learned from medical examiner and State Police review of these cases, though many have been presumed related to drugs, including a synthetic drug, K-2, that has been easy to smuggle into the prisons and has proven unusually dangerous. Flanery was serving time for drug and sexual assault charges in Greene County.

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UPDATE: A prison spokesman says now that State Police are called in ALL deaths. But the prison will NOT reveal what it learns about this deaths, claiming privacy of inmate records. I objected that the prison could quanity deaths due to unnatural causes and the specific cause without compromising an individual inmate’s privacy, if indeed that privilege exists for those in the system. 

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