Tracking Incarcerated Individual Mortality in Local Jails
AJHP
Mortality trends in most of America’s 3000 local jails are almost impossible to discern because jail-by-jail death data collected by the federal government is kept secret—unavailable to the public, news organizations and researchers, and even government officials. Reuters filled the information gap by requesting 12 years of death data from 523 local jails. This data shows that mortality rates in these institutions are two or three times the national average.