USA TODAY won a lawsuit to get hidden data on prison deaths. Here’s what it shows.

More than 21,000 people died in local jails and state prisons in four years, according to records the government has hidden from public view since 2021.

The U.S. Department of Justice released the inmate death records to USA TODAY on April 23 after a years-long court battle. The records include the names, dates, locations and circumstances of deaths in custody. It comes from the prison systems in all 50 states and about 2,800 local jails across the country between Oct. 1, 2015 and the end of 2019.

USA TODAY’s initial analysis of these never-before-seen records shows that the number of accidental overdose deaths among prisoners doubled over the four-year period leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic – from about 220 per year to nearly 440 – while counts of homicide and suicide also increased significantly. They were up 30% and 13%, respectively. 

Overall, the data show most inmates died from illnesses, ranging from pre-existing conditions like lung cancer and heart disease to more acute issues like pneumonia and sepsis. However, the share of deaths caused by disease shrank each year as the other causes grew more prevalent. 

Suicide was a much more common cause of death at local jails, where it accounts for nearly a third of all deaths reported. At state prisons, suicide represents just 7% of the reported deaths. 

The information about who died in custody and why, released to USA TODAY after a three-year court battle, allows for the first public accounting of deaths in custody nationwide since an updated version of the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act took effect on Oct. 1, 2015.  

The DOJ is scheduled to release records of deaths in federal prisons to USA TODAY in May. 

Further analysis of the information will allow journalists and the public to identify trends, tell the stories of the dead and hold accountable those responsible.  

“The data is the public’s best window into why so many people are dying in jails and prisons across the country,” said attorney Stephen Stich Match of Loevy and Loevy, who represented Gannett, USA TODAY’s parent company, in the case. “Understanding past deaths will help prevent future ones.” 

In her decision in favor of the news outlet, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell wrote that the government’s arguments for keeping the federal data confidential reflected “sloppiness and inaccuracy,” at best, or “at worst, intentional obfuscation over the course of this litigation.” 

A request for more recent information is pending. 

USA TODAY first requested the data released this week under the Freedom of Information Act in April 2021. The government responded in less than a week, saying 236,568 pages of potentially relevant information existed, but refused to release them. 

USA TODAY sued, and Howell ruled in the newspaper’s favor in March 2023. The release of the data, the judge found, was in the public’s interest because one of the purposes of the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act was to “provide continued and improved oversight” of law enforcement. 

What’s more, when Congress passed the law, legislators expressed a “desire to hold states and federal law enforcement entities accountable, to allow for congressional oversight of those entities’ processes and outcomes, and to provide transparency in state and federal entities tasked with holding a person in custody and to draw back the curtain on the oftentimes controversial instances when those in law enforcement custody subsequently die,” Howell wrote. 

Before the government turned over the records, however, officials blacked out enough information to make them essentially useless. For example, the government redacted the state where the death occurred in 22% of entries and the facility in 58% of cases. 

The newspaper went back to court to demand unredacted documents. In deciding that the government should release them, the judge ruled that the public interest in the information outweighed the privacy issues of the deceased people. 

“Given the scope and importance of the deaths in custody problem … a substantial public interest is demonstrated in the release of unredacted data to inform the public about (the justice department’s) operations and allow them to evaluate the agency’s performance of its duties to report on and analyze deaths in custody,” the judge wrote, “and, ultimately, reduce deaths in custody.” 

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