0 people, most recent first. Choose a name, or a dot on the map.
6 of them are recorded here one by one, 5 by name. Another 724 are known only as numbers: deaths the official yearly counts report, for the same years, beyond the people recorded here.
Each dot is one of them, held in a jail, prison or lockup, or executed by the state. Some died after abuse by officers; others from withdrawal, overdose or untreated illness; many by suicide. Almost all of them show the state’s neglect of the people in its custody.
This is an undercount: many deaths are never made public, and older records are hard to find.
0 people, most recent first. Choose a name, or a dot on the map.
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.
CDC 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.
Source: CDC reports. Official counts are deaths in state prisons only; county jails report to no central agency.
| Year | Reported by CDC | Recorded here |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 (11 months reported) | 62 | 0 |
| 2023 | 80 | 0 |
| 2022 | 80 | 1 |
| 2021 | 80 | 1 |
| 2020 | 59 | 0 |
| 2019 | 47 | 0 |
| 2018 | 45 | 0 |
| 2017 | 38 | 0 |
| 2016 | 47 | 0 |
| 2015 | 41 | 0 |
| 2014 | 51 | 0 |
| 2013 | 50 | 0 |
| 2012 | 46 | 0 |
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.
Questions, a correction, or a death I’ve missed? Email me at orion.j.taylor@gmail.com.