Between 2019 and 2023, nearly 4,000 people died in U.S. jails. That’s about 1,000 people annually. Nearly one-third of those deaths don’t have a cause of death, according to an analysis of federal data by The Marshall Project.
In the U.S., there are statistics on just about everything. We know how many people die from heart disease, cancer and childbirth. So why is it so difficult to know exactly how many people die in jail? We ask Jay Aronson, co-author of the book “Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do About It.”
6 questions with Jay Aronson
Why is it so difficult to know exactly how many people die in jail
“I think there are two things going on. One is that we count what we care about. If we care about something, we do a really good job of counting it. And the other thing is that our jails are completely locally run. They’re essentially the fiefdoms of local government officials, where cronies get jobs, where favored businesses get contracts.
“We have this situation where people don’t always care about those who are incarcerated in jails, and also local officials get to tell us what’s going on inside of these institutions, and they get to withhold things that they don’t want us to know about.”
There is a federal law that requires a full accounting of deaths in custody. At a Senate hearing in 2022, Georgia Sen. John Ossoff said an investigation revealed that in 2021 alone, the Department of Justice failed to identify at least 990 deaths in custody. What’s the consequence of that much uncertainty?
“In part, the consequence is that we can’t prevent those deaths in the future because we don’t have the total universe of these events. The other consequence is that if there is wrongdoing, if there is negligence, we can’t act on that. And I think that that’s a situation that all Americans should care about, whether you think that people deserve to be in prisons or whether you think that there are better ways of dealing with antisocial behavior.”
The Marshall Project data shows that about 1,000 people died in jails annually over that four-year span. And the cause of death for nearly a third of those cases was unavailable, meaning there was no cause listed. What does that say to you?
“It says to me that we don’t do a good job of enforcing the law that’s on the books, the Death and Custody Reporting Act. We have certain loopholes, like compassionate release, so that if someone is about to die, it is possible for someone at the jail to contact the local district attorney and have the charges dropped or to push through a compassionate release.
“So when that person is on their deathbed and is kind of literally wheeled out of the facility or dumped at the front door on the sidewalk, they no longer need to count those deaths. Basically, the jails get to decide, and in some states, there’s better reporting, but there might be a law in the books. But as we all know it, you can have something on the books, but it has to be enforced.”
The next most common cause of death was natural causes. Does that raise any red flags to you?
“You can think of it as an expected death or a death that’s caused by as lay people might understand to be disease or old age. What I’ve seen in lots of cases where someone is stated to have died from a natural cause, you actually will see that there are other things going on.
“Like that person might have bruises on their body. They might have lacerations. There might be evidence of neglect or of malnutrition. And if those things aren’t being reported accurately, then a situation that might not have happened outside of the jail actually just gets labeled a natural death, and then everyone moves on.”
A man who recently got out of custody told Here & Now that it can be very difficult to convince a guard that you’re sick and you need to see a doctor. What do you think about that?
“The thing that immediately comes to mind is that we use jails in this country to basically hide people that we don’t want to see on the streets. They have substance use issues. They need care. They need someone to kind of hold their hands through a crisis that they’re having. And so we’re putting them in a place that does none of those things. And we are expecting jails to solve problems that jails were never meant to solve.
“But instead, we put our sickest, most vulnerable people in these facilities because we don’t have anywhere else to care for them. And we expect people who are not trained to provide care to deal with them. And so, I mean, of course, if you are in a situation where 90% of the people that you are dealing with need care of some sort, and they’re all asking for it all the time, at a certain point, you just tune it out because you can’t provide that care.”
It’s often poor Black women and mothers who are left looking for answers for their loved ones. How do race and class factor into all this?
“It is important to recognize the race and class dimensions, and it’s extremely important to recognize that Black women have borne the burden of advocacy on this issue. But the other thing is that when you look at the raw numbers, the majority of people who are dying are not Black. They’re not any sort of minority. They’re white men. It’s kind of become a monster that sort of consumes us all.
“Any one of us could wind up in jail on a bad day, whether we’re suspected of driving under the influence, whether we’ve been involved in a political protest and get arrested. We’re in a moment where we need to recognize that this isn’t a problem that someone else has or someone else has to deal with. We all are at risk for dying in custody and we’re all at risk for dying in jails.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
This reporting was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
____
Wilder Fleming produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2025 WBUR