At least 3 people have died in custody in Northern Mariana Islands

How deaths in custody are reported in the Northern Mariana Islands

The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) has one level of government and no municipal or county jails. The Department of Corrections (DOC) runs the Saipan Correctional Facility, which can hold up to 200 people, and the Rota Jail, which can hold 50; both hold people awaiting trial as well as people serving sentences. The Department of Public Safety (DPS) is the police; the Judiciary's Marshals Division, the Commonwealth Ports Authority Airport Police and Customs and Biosecurity can also arrest people.¹ DOC also holds people for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which lists the CNMI Department of Corrections in Susupe, Saipan, among its detention facilities.²

In the words of its own plan under the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act, the CNMI "does not have a law that requires local agencies to report any data related to deaths that occur while in custody." The Criminal Justice Planning Agency (CJPA) collects quarterly reports from DPS and DOC, with DOC's due five days after each quarter ends, and passes them to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). Under DOC's policy, the shift commander reports a death to DPS and waits for its Criminal Investigation Bureau, and briefs the commissioner and director of corrections. The plan says DPS has "no specific written operation procedures that address Death of a person detained, arrested or in the custody of Police." The plan names the Marshals Division, the Airport Police and Customs and Biosecurity as agencies not taking part in the reporting.¹

I have found no list, count or report of deaths in custody published by DOC, DPS, CJPA or any other CNMI office. BJA, which publishes the reports it receives only as tables without names, leaves the CNMI off its state map and state table because the CNMI reported no deaths at all from fiscal 2020 through fiscal 2024.³ Deaths become public through statements by DOC and DPS to the local press, chiefly Marianas Variety and the Saipan Tribune.⁴⁵ When a person held for ICE dies, ICE publishes its own report naming the person.⁶

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics collected yearly data on deaths from state prison systems from 2001 to 2019; its tables list the 50 states and the federal prisons, and no territory.⁷

What has changed

1. 1999The U.S. Department of Justice, which had found in August 1998 that conditions at six CNMI facilities violated the constitutional rights of the people held there, filed suit with a consent decree on February 23; the court approved it two days later. The facilities were the Saipan Prison Complex, the Saipan Detention Facility, the Kagman Youth Facility, the Saipan Immigration Detention Facility and the detention facilities on Tinian and Rota.⁸ The decree required screening of every person admitted for suicide risk, and cells for suicide watch free of "hanging points," with checks at least every 15 minutes.⁹
2. 2014On May 20, the federal court found that the CNMI had substantially complied and ended the consent decree.⁸
3. 2019CJPA began reporting deaths in custody to BJA.¹ On November 11, a corrections officer serving lunch at the prison in Susupe found a man unresponsive in his cell; he was pronounced dead at the Commonwealth Health Center. DPS and DOC would not name him. A source told the Saipan Tribune that he was 28 and had hanged himself, and that medics at the scene saw signs of rigor mortis.⁵¹⁰
4. 2026ICE took custody of Lianyong Wei, 51, a citizen of China, on August 22 while he was held at DOC, and kept him there. At about 6:34 a.m. on August 23, a man held at DOC who was cleaning the housing unit floors alerted an officer, who found him hanging from the top bunk by a bedsheet. Emergency medical staff arrived at about 6:48 a.m., and he was pronounced dead at the Commonwealth Health Center at 7:19 a.m. His death certificate gives the manner of death as suicide.¹¹ DOC announced his death the next day and said it was reviewing its procedures, but did not give the cause, citing protected health information.⁴ The U.S. Department of Homeland Security would not say whether he had received the health screening its rules require within 12 hours of intake.¹²

How far the official numbers can be trusted

The only official figure for the CNMI is BJA's: no deaths reported from fiscal 2020 through fiscal 2024.³ The man found dead in his cell at Susupe on November 11, 2019, died in fiscal 2020.⁵ I cannot tell whether his death was reported to BJA.

The CNMI's reporting plan names Guam's Bureau of Statistics and Plans, rather than CJPA, as the agency that has collected the data since 2019, in a passage that closely follows Guam's plan.¹¹³ Official accounts of Lianyong Wei's death do not agree with each other. ICE says the man cleaning the floors alerted an officer at about 6:34 a.m. and that officers began CPR. DPS says another man saw him unresponsive at about 6:25 a.m., that he appeared stiff and pale, and that CPR began at about 6:42 a.m.; it says surveillance video last showed him in his area at about 10:24 p.m. the night before.¹¹¹⁴