At least 2 people have died in custody in U.S. Virgin Islands

How deaths in custody are reported in the U.S. Virgin Islands

One territorial agency, the Virgin Islands Bureau of Corrections (BOC), runs every jail and prison: the John A. Bell Adult Correctional Facility on St. Croix, long known as Golden Grove, and the St. Thomas jail in the Alexander A. Farrelly Criminal Justice Complex. Both hold people awaiting trial as well as people serving sentences.¹ In June 2026 the Bureau held 181 people in the territory, 70 on St. Thomas and 111 on St. Croix, and 170 sentenced people on the mainland: 137 through CoreCivic in Mississippi and 33 with the Virginia Department of Corrections.² The Department of Human Services runs the Youth Rehabilitation Center on St. Croix, and the Virgin Islands Police Department is one of several agencies that make arrests.¹

In the words of the territory's plan under the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act, "The US Virgin Islands Territory does not have a death-in-custody reporting law." The Law Enforcement Planning Commission, the territory's agency for federal justice grants, passes reports to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) each quarter. The plan, dated August 30, 2023, says the commission "collects the death in custody data per request," that the information has been taken "on an honor-based system," and that the territory has no website for the data.¹ BJA's link to the plan no longer works.³

The Bureau of Corrections announces some deaths in press releases that give the person's age and facility and say there were no obvious signs of foul play. In 2022 its spokesman wrote: "The Bureau's policy is not to release the name of deceased inmates/detainees or their cause of death." The Bureau says its policies require an internal administrative investigation whenever anyone dies in its custody, that it notifies the police, and that autopsies are done by the Medical Examiner's Office of the Virgin Islands Department of Justice.⁴ I found no notice of a death among the news posts on the Bureau's website.⁵ The Department of Justice keeps the autopsy records. It has named a person who died in custody and given the cause at least once, in 2021, and in another case refused for months to say more than "natural causes."⁶⁷

Both facilities have been under federal court oversight for decades, and the court monitors' reports, which describe deaths without naming anyone, are the nearest thing to an official record.⁸⁹¹⁰ 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.¹¹ Since fiscal 2020, BJA has collected death-in-custody reports from the states and territories. It publishes only tables, with no names, and it hides any count of five or fewer.¹²

What has changed

1. 1986The U.S. Department of Justice, which had found in January that the conditions at Golden Grove violated the constitutional rights of the people held there, sued the territory under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. On December 1, the court approved a consent decree covering fire safety, security, sanitation and medical care.⁸
2. 1994On June 20, people held at the Criminal Justice Complex on St. Thomas, represented by the ACLU National Prison Project, filed a class action, Carty v. Farrelly, over conditions at the jail, including medical and mental health care. The parties settled in October, and the court adopted the settlement as a consent decree in December.⁹¹³
3. 2006The court found the territory in contempt over Golden Grove and appointed a special master. It found the territory in contempt again in 2007.⁸ In the St. Thomas case the court found the territory in contempt in 2007 for failing to move people with serious mental illness to psychiatric facilities.¹³
4. 2013On May 14, the court adopted a settlement agreement for Golden Grove, monitored by Kenneth A. Ray.⁸ It requires "morbidity or mortality reviews of all prisoner deaths" within 30 days.¹⁰ On August 14, the court approved a new settlement for the St. Thomas jail, covering classification, use of force, medical and mental health care, staffing and monitoring.⁹
5. 2015The monitor's eighth report found that Golden Grove had no suicide-resistant cells and that people on suicide watch had been observed "on an intermittent and unpredictable schedule, if at all." It also found that "although there was a recent death, no one has reviewed it."¹⁰
6. 2017A federal detainee was found unresponsive in his cell at Golden Grove and died at the Juan F. Luis Hospital on St. Croix on May 8. The Bureau's release called it a "possible suicide" and gave no name and no date. Federal prosecutors told the court that Carlos Forrester, a federal detainee, had died that day; the Bureau did not confirm that he was the man who died.¹⁴¹⁵ On July 2, Berniel Garvey, 61, one of 67 people the Bureau had moved from Golden Grove to the Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona in 2016, died. The Bureau said he had a heart attack and renal failure. A senator said his family had not been told; the Bureau said its policy allowed it to notify only the next of kin on file.¹⁶
7. 2019James McDonald Laudat, 48, was found dead in his cell at Golden Grove at 8:30 a.m. on November 25, three months after a judge ordered him moved to a secure psychiatric facility. The territory had no secure facility that could treat him, and no off-island facility had a bed for him.¹⁷ In July 2020, after months of questions from the Virgin Islands Daily News, the Department of Justice said only that he had died of "natural causes."⁷
8. 2020At about 4:30 a.m. on November 9, the cellmate of Edwin Turnbull, 76, told guards at the St. Thomas jail that Turnbull had fallen. The sergeant called the medical director, who said he would be evaluated in the morning, and the guards left him in the cell. He was found without a pulse at about 8:10 a.m. and pronounced dead at about 8:30. The acting warden testified that guards were not checking the jail's mental health unit every 15 minutes as required, because of understaffing, and that a check a guard reported at 7:36 a.m. had not happened. Judge Robert Molloy restricted the surveillance video, and Turnbull was identified only by his initials in testimony.¹⁸
9. 2021Bryan Glasgow, 55, was found unresponsive at John A. Bell on September 17. The Bureau would not release his name; on September 24 the Department of Justice named him and said the medical examiner had found he died of congestive heart failure.¹⁹⁶
10. 2022Craig Vanausdal, 36, was pronounced dead at the St. Thomas jail at about 4:20 a.m. on May 16. The Bureau said he had come into its custody "with a life-threatening illness" and refused to name him.⁴ A lawsuit filed in 2024 named him and says he had hemophilia, that he was taken into custody on May 4 and went more than 12 days without his medication, and that he was never taken to the hospital. On May 13 the Bureau's medical director wrote asking for help moving him to the mainland "before it is too late."²⁰
11. 2025On November 20, the court ended the medical sections of the Golden Grove settlement, including its requirement to review deaths as it applies to medical care, so the monitor no longer reviews medical care there. Monitoring of mental health care goes on.²¹¹⁰
12. 2026At a budget hearing in June, a senator described a person held off-island who died of natural causes and was cremated before some of his relatives knew he had died.²

How far the official numbers can be trusted

The only official count is in the territory's 2023 reporting plan: one death at John A. Bell in September 2021, in fiscal 2021; one at the St. Thomas jail in fiscal 2022; and none in fiscal 2023 as of August. The plan does not mention Edwin Turnbull, who died at the St. Thomas jail on November 9, 2020, also in fiscal 2021.¹¹⁸ The plan itself says the numbers have been taken on trust from the agencies that report them.¹

The Bureau will not give names or causes of death, and for the men named above the cause and manner of death came out, if at all, from the Department of Justice or from a lawsuit.⁴²⁰⁶ The court has kept guards' names and the jail's video from the public.¹⁸ People the territory holds on the mainland who die there are counted, if at all, by the states where they die.¹⁶² Whatever the territory reports to BJA is hidden by BJA's rule against publishing counts of five or fewer.¹²