Andrea Armstrong launched a project six years ago that seemed impossible at the time: compiling a database on the number of people who have died while incarcerated in Louisiana. 

Understanding the full depth of the prison death crisis in the United States has long been a challenge. While prisons are mandated by state laws to file reports on the deaths of people under their supervision, the rules are much weaker for the county and city jails that typically detain those who have been arrested but have yet to face trial for their alleged crimes. 

Armstrong, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, launched the Incarceration Transparency project in 2019. The online database tracked deaths in every prison, jail, and youth detention facility in Louisiana and South Carolina from 2015 to 2021. The site also features a heat map of Louisiana parishes and the number of incarcerated people who have died in each area. The database also gives users a breakdown of the available information associated with each death.

Armstrong’s data revealed that on the rise are preventable deaths, those not due to natural causes and often related to drug overdoses or suicide. 

“Louisiana is not alone in seeing this spike in deaths, but it is particularly troubling because jails and prisons are supposed to be secure spaces,” Armstrong told Prism. “When we think about drug-related deaths in particular, that shows an inability to meet a core function of their operations.”

Armstrong’s project, and similar research into the deaths of those in custody, are efforts to shine a light on an area of mass incarceration that for decades has been mired in darkness. While this kind of research may eventually lead to legislative action, prison and jail officials are slow to make meaningful changes. 

For example, in September 2021, the Washington State Department of Corrections announced the elimination of “disciplinary segregation,” otherwise known as solitary confinement. However, the agency continues to use other forms of solitary confinement—including administrative segregation and max custody—on vulnerable populations, sometimes for months or years at a time. Decades of research and studies show that solitary confinement has harmful and long-lasting effects on physical and mental health and has links to self-harm and suicidal ideation.  

Families are left in tatters when a loved one dies behind bars, and officials provide very few answers about the tragedy. But some families are now fighting back. 

In West Virginia, the families of people who died in the Southern Regional Jail in Raleigh County filed a lawsuit against the West Virginia State Police. Thirteen people died in the jail in 2022, and the families allege that the state police, who run the jail, covered up information about their loved ones’ deaths. The case was settled in 2024 for $4 million. In 2023, six former correctional officers were federally charged in the death of Quantez Burks, who was detained at Southern Regional Jail for less than 24 hours before he was beaten to death by officers. A 25-year-old correctional officer was recently sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in Burks’ death. 

In-custody deaths are a crisis that is only worsening. Reuters found that jail deaths surged 35% between 2009 and 2019, despite the jail population decreasing during the same period.

The jail system is particularly deadly, according to Jay Aronson, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon University and co-author of “Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do about It.”

The real kind of black holes in this country are jails, and that’s because jails are run at the hyperlocal level by counties or sheriffs, and there’s very little oversight at that level.

Jay Aronson, co-author of “Death in Custody”

“The real kind of black holes in this country are jails, and that’s because jails are run at the hyperlocal level by counties or sheriffs, and there’s very little oversight at that level,” he said. “When you’re in a jail, you are at the mercy of that facility and at the people who run it. You have no autonomy, you have no ability to advocate for yourself, and so it makes it even more challenging.”

According to Aronson, jail deaths don’t often lead to a public outcry or media attention. “We tend not to care all that much about people who are incarcerated, at a societal level. We think that people who are in prison and jail are bad people who deserve to be there,” he said. And because there isn’t “a lot of sunshine” in jails, Aronson explained that it’s easy for the people who run these institutions to cover up in-custody deaths or claim people inside died of “natural causes.”

When people inside die from supposed natural causes, it’s often because facilities don’t provide necessary health care, said Michele Deitch, the director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. “When officials use the term ‘natural death,’ it’s meant to suggest that we don’t have to dig any deeper. But that’s not accurate at all. A lot of so-called natural deaths are very preventable.”

Deitch’s lab analyzes public data on in-custody deaths and conducts studies on the information available.  

For example, she has highlighted how jail officials could help prevent drug-related deaths with a more diligent staffing process. “I’ve seen how some agencies make staff go through screening technology to stop the drugs from coming in,” she noted.

The high rates of suicide in solitary confinement can also be prevented. Armstrong points to how these sites are some of the most controlled spaces within a prison or a jail, so when an incarcerated person has the time to craft a way to die by suicide, it demonstrates a dearth of personnel and training. 

“These acts of self-harm tell us this kind of space isn’t as closely observed as they should be,” Armstrong said. “Buildings don’t save people; people do.”

Armstrong, a 2023 MacArthur fellow, has helped draw more attention to deaths behind bars. Her work highlights the lack of reliable and timely data required by the 2013 Death in Custody Reporting Act.

In 2022, Sens. Jon Ossoff and Ron Johnson co-chaired a subcommittee investigation and hearing on the subject, which led the Department of Justice to begin publishing studies required by federal law. 

There has also been movement at the state level. In 2023, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections published a summary-level data dashboard on deaths of people in custody. “While this dashboard lacks important details that prevent deeper analysis, it is an important first step in transparency for deaths behind bars in Louisiana,” Armstrong said.

Deitch’s work hasn’t gone unnoticed. Her extensive research into in-custody deaths led to a key addition to the Sandra Bland Act, a bill named after a Black Texan who died in jail under suspicious circumstances after her arrest during a 2015 traffic stop. “I got into that bill a provision that ensured that all deaths in custody need to be investigated by an independent third-party law enforcement agency, so that sheriffs couldn’t investigate themselves,” Deitch explained. 

Armstrong told Prism that she will continue to fight for wider transparency and stronger recognition of incarcerated people’s rights. 

“Realize there are 10 million jail admissions every year, and for every person admitted into a jail, there is at least one other person that loves them,” Armstrong said. “That’s 20 million people, at least, impacted by incarceration annually. One of the things that I want everyone to understand is that these folks are not just other people. These are our people.”

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor