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 Arkansas at least $3 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, and private contractors at least $3.9 million more. Families sued over at least 16 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Larry Eugene Price Jr. | Sebastian County | 2024 | $3 million |
| Larry Eugene Price Jr. | Turn Key Health Clinics | 2024 | $3 million |
| Brock Austin Tyner | Turn Key Health | 2025 | $900,000 |
The Arkansas Division of Correction 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 division gives only a monthly count of deaths in its director's report to the Board of Corrections, with no names or causes,1 and since 2015 it calls each death "natural causes" unless the State Police investigate.2 Some months are missing from the reports it has posted, so those years are marked as incomplete.
| Year | Deaths in state custody, as reported by ADC | Named here |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 (1 month reported) | 12 | 2 |
| 2025 | 126 | 3 |
| 2024 (11 months reported) | 83 | 8 |
| 2023 | 91 | 3 |
| 2022 | 59 | 5 |
| 2021 | 63 | 5 |
| 2020 | 122 | 12 |
| 2019 | 77 | 7 |
| 2018 | 73 | 26 |
| 2017 | 90 | 10 |
| 2016 (10 months reported) | 54 | 1 |
| 2015 (11 months reported) | 46 | 0 |
Source: The Arkansas Division of Correction monthly reports to the Board of Corrections, summed by year. Official counts are deaths in state prisons only; county jails report to no central agency.
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 Arkansas Division of Correction runs the state prisons. Each month the director's report to the Board of Corrections gives the number of people who died in the prison system the month before, and how many of their bodies were claimed or cremated. It gives no names and no causes.1 In January 2015 the department stopped releasing specific causes of death. Its chief legal counsel said causes were "generally exempt" from disclosure under state law, and since then each death has been called "natural causes" unless it leads to a State Police investigation.2
State law (Ark. Code § 12-12-315(b)) says the county coroner and the State Medical Examiner must be told of any death in a correctional facility, and the Arkansas State Police must be told when no medical history explains it. In-custody deaths go to the medical examiner at the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory for autopsy, and by law (§ 12-12-312) the laboratory's records are confidential.3 The State Police investigate a death in a prison, jail or police custody when the agency involved asks, and they announce it in short news releases.45 They keep no public list of these investigations, and a State Police spokesperson has said the investigations are typically directed at criminal intent, not at breaches of policy.5
County jails are run by sheriffs, and each keeps its own records. The Criminal Detention Facilities Review Committees, part of the Department of Public Safety, inspect every jail once a year.6 Their reports are released only through public records requests, and the committees cannot sanction or close a jail.5
For the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act, the Department of Finance and Administration collects reports of deaths in jails, prisons, juvenile facilities and during arrests. It sends them to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance every quarter.3 Each report gives the person's name, race, birth year, the date and place of death, the agency involved, the manner of death and a short description of what happened.7 The department does not publish these reports. They are released only under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.5
For state prisons, the totals mostly agree. The Bureau of Justice Statistics counted 54 deaths in Arkansas prisons in 2015 and 76 in 2019.18 The department's own list of deaths, released to the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project, has the same totals for those years.19 For January to November 2020, the monthly board reports add up to 113 deaths, the same number as that list.2019
How people died is much harder to check. Since 2015 the department has called deaths "natural causes" unless the State Police investigate, and the crime laboratory's autopsy records are confidential.23 Between 2001 and 2019, Arkansas prisons had the highest average yearly rate of deaths from drug or alcohol intoxication of any state prison system, 20 per 100,000 people.18
There is no public count of deaths in Arkansas jails. Reporters at the Arkansas Advocate and Yale's Investigative Reporting Lab found 34 jail deaths in 2023 in the state's federal filings.21 The Department of Finance and Administration's first release of those files left out several months, including the period when Rodricus Lewis died in the Union County Jail, until the reporters pointed out the gap.1721 In 2023 the department said it did not know how many agencies were failing to report, so I treat the jail figures as a minimum.3