One mark per person, by the year they died. Choose the box at the side to see every decade. Coverage is uneven: recent deaths come mostly from local news since 2000, older ones from official lists and historical newspapers, so the shape shows what was recorded as much as how many people died.
These deaths have cost taxpayers in Alabama at least $1.1 million: the amount governments have agreed or been ordered to pay the families and estates of at least 2 people named here, in settlements and court awards reported in the news. Families sued over at least 52 of these deaths. Many suits end with no amount made public, and many settlements are kept confidential, so the true cost is higher.
| Person | Paid by | Year | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rocrast Donnell Mack | State of Alabama | $900,000 | |
| Steven Davis | State of Alabama | $250,000 |
The Alabama Department of Corrections reports how many people die in its prisons each year, but not who they were. Most of those deaths, especially from illness, never appear in the news, so far fewer are named here. The gap is people still to be identified.
The department's own figures can't be taken at face value. In 2019 the U.S. Department of Justice found that its incident reports had recorded likely homicides and overdoses as natural deaths, and that it had left at least 30 deaths off the lists it gave federal investigators.1 It stopped publishing deaths in its monthly reports in October 2022.2 In its report for April to June 2026, it listed overdose, accidental, undetermined and suicide deaths as "N/A".3
| Year | Deaths in state custody, as reported by ADOC | Named here |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 (6 months reported) | 85 | 19 |
| 2025 | 202 | 10 |
| 2024 | 277 | 25 |
| 2023 | 325 | 42 |
| 2022 | 271 | 40 |
| 2021 (3 months reported) | 39 | 17 |
| 2020 (11 months reported) | 185 | 40 |
| 2019 | 130 | 23 |
| 2018 | 133 | 10 |
Source: The Alabama Department of Corrections monthly and quarterly reports. Official counts are deaths in state prisons only. Since 2026, county jails and city lockups report deaths to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, which does not publish them.9
Each bar is a source and the years its records cover. Sources checked on a schedule are searched again for new records; the others were collected once.
The Alabama Department of Corrections investigates every death in its prisons. A 2021 state law, Ala. Code § 14-1-24, requires it to give the Legislature's Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee quarterly reports with statistical data on the number, manner and cause of deaths.34 Those reports list each death by prison, date and investigative case number, but not by name, and the manner of death appears only when the investigation closes, which can take months or years.35
The department sends a death for autopsy only when it considers it unlawful, suspicious or unnatural under Ala. Code § 36-18-2. Those deaths go to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, or to the Jefferson County Coroner's Office for deaths there, and other deaths get only a toxicology screen.6 No state law requires a coroner or medical examiner to investigate a death in custody; Jefferson County has required it under a local law since 1979.7
Deaths in county jails and city lockups are not published by any state agency. For the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act, the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs (ADECA) collects reports. In its 2023 plan to the U.S. Department of Justice, it said Alabama had no law to compel reporting, that its only lever was a grant condition reaching about 6 to 7 percent of law enforcement agencies a year, and that it could not ensure the state's 285 secure confinement facilities reported timely and accurate information. It also said it had no public website for the data.8
Since January 10, 2026, a rule of the Alabama Justice Information Commission has required state, county and city agencies to report every death in custody each quarter to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which passes the data to ADECA for the U.S. Attorney General. Agencies must report even when no one died. The agency does not make the information public; questions about a death go to the agency that reported it.9
Deaths in immigration detention are reported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which Congress requires to make each in-custody death report public within 90 days.10
The Department of Justice found that the department's public reports showed 24 homicides from January 2015 to June 2018, and it identified three more. Incident reports, which the department uses for the public statistics the law requires, often listed killings and overdoses as natural deaths. Comparing the department's death lists with autopsies from other agencies, investigators found at least 30 deaths it had not disclosed, and the department could not explain why.1
Independent counts keep finding gaps. Alabama Appleseed found that the department's list of 325 deaths in 2023 left out deaths that appeared in other agencies' records and in the department's own quarterly reports.15 By January 2024, 198 of those 325 deaths still had no official cause.16 The ACLU of Alabama found that for more than one in three deaths in 2024, the department listed the cause as "unknown" or "under investigation", and that its categories have no public definitions.17
Jail deaths are harder still to count, since the state agency that reports them to Washington says it cannot make every facility report.8 Local records show what is missing: the Jefferson County coroner investigated 44 deaths in the county's jails from January 2021 to June 2026, records that ABC 33/40 obtained by request.7