The Leading Causes of Death in Jail

Suicide is the leading killer of U.S. jail inmates. Those that take their own lives tend to do so shortly after they are locked up. The smallest jails, those with fewer than an average of 50 inmates, have the highest suicide rates. And heart disease is the leading illness-related cause of death.

Those are just a few of the facts that can be found in a new report on mortality rates in the jail system, published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

In total, between 2000 and 2007 — the period covered by the report — there were 8,110 deaths in the nation's jail system. A rate that, happily, declined from 152 per 100,000 inmates in 2000 to 141 per 100,000 in 2007. The distribution of those deaths has been fairly consistent — in any given year of the study, 80% percent of the jail jurisdictions in the country experienced no deaths.

But it's the suicide and illness statistics that are among the most intriguing aspects of the report's offerings. No matter the popular conception of jails as violent purgatories, only 2% of the jail deaths that occurred during the period covered by the report were deemed homicides. Far, far more common were deaths from suicide (29%), heart disease (22%), drug or alcohol intoxication (7%) or AIDS-related illness (5%).

It's hard to say what lesson should be taken away from the suicide data. On the one hand, suicide rates have declined precipitously since the 1980s. In 1983, there were 129 suicides per 100,000 jail inmates, and by 2007, that rate declined to 36 per 100,000. But on the other hand, the suicide rate in the country's jail facilities remains  on average three times higher than that of prisons around the country.

The distribution of jail deaths is also hard to read. Smaller jails had the highest mortality rates in the country between 2000-2007, but that phenomenon can be explained almost entirely as the result of their higher suicide rates. Is incarceration more dispiriting when the facility is smaller? Or is it just that smaller facilities lack the resources to watch people and keep them from harming themselves?

What can be said is that it's no surprise illness (all illnesses combined accounted for 53% of all jail deaths) remains such a significant cause of death, given the long-standing problems with medical care in U.S. jails. Let's hope that at a minimum, this latest report can help give demands for improved medical care in prison greater momentum.

Photo Credit: jolien vallins