The Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice released a December 2012 report entitled "Mortality in Local Jails and State Prisons, 2000-2010 - Statistical Tables." The report showed that 4,150 state and local prisoners died in 2010, with local jail prisoner deaths accounting for 918 of them. This was a decrease of about 5% compared to 2009.

The leading cause of jail prisoner deaths in 2010 was suicide. At 305 suicides, it remained close to the 304 jail suicides which occurred in 2009. However, this represented an upward trend since 2006. The next four leading causes of jail prisoner deaths were heart disease, drug or alcohol intoxication, cancer and liver disease.

The number of jail prisoner deaths grew almost linearly from 904 in 2001 to 1100 in 2007 before dropping to 959 in 2008 and continuing to decline to 918 in 2010. The jail prisoner death rate was fairly steady, varying between 151 and 141 (per 100,000 prisoners) from 2001 through 2007 before dropping to 121 in 2008 and growing slightly to 125 in 2010.

The most obvious reason for the decline in jail prisoner deaths is the reduction in AIDS-related deaths, which was one of the five leading causes of death in all years prior to 2009. AIDS-related deaths accounted for 6.3% of the deaths in 2001, but had declined to 2.8% in 2010. This may be attributable to improved HIV treatment and awareness penetrating the local jail culture.

Nine out of ten local jail prisoners who died in 2010 were male. They accounted for at least 87% of the jail prisoner deaths each year between 2001 and 2010. Prior to 2008, the male jail prisoner death rate was within 24% of the female jail prisoner death rate. From 2008 through 2010, they were about equal.

Over the course of the study, the male jail prisoner suicide rate (42 per 100,000 prisoners) exceeded the female rate (27 per 100,000) by 55%. White local jail prisoners had a suicide rate (42 per 100,000) over three times that of Hispanic jail prisoners (27 per 100,000) and more than five times that of blacks (15 per 100,000). Jail prisoners 55 or older had the highest suicide rate (60 per 100,000) which was more than double that of jail prisoners who were 18 to 24 (28 per 100,000). Likewise, jail prisoners 55 or older had the highest homicide rate (9 per 100,000) which was between 1.8 and 4.4 times that of the 18 to 14-year-old prisoners between 2001 and 2010.

California, Texas, New York and Florida combined accounted for about a third of all jail deaths. They also had the largest jail populations-- 31% of all local jail prisoners in the nation. Most non-federal prisoners who died in custody were serving time in a state prison (78%). The 3,232 state prisoners who died in prison in 2010 represented a 5% decline in the number of state prisoner deaths in 2009.

The leading cause of prisoner deaths in state prisons was cancer. With 894 deaths, cancer caused 27.7% of all state prisoner deaths. The state prisoner cancer mortality rate (68 per 100,000) exceeds the heart disease mortality rate (65 per 100,000) for the third year in a row. Together, cancer and heart disease accounted for about half of all prisoner deaths in state prisons from 2001 through 2010. After cancer and heart disease, the next three leading causes of deaths in state prisons were respiratory disease, liver disease and suicide.

AIDS-related deaths were one of the five leading causes of state prisoner deaths in 2001 and 2002. AIDS-related mortality declined 76% between 2001 and 2010, accounting for 9.8% of all state prisoner deaths in 2001, but only 2.3% in 2010.

Although the population of state prisoners 55 or older increased by a third in 2010, the mortality rate for that group declined by 27%.

In 2010, the mortality rate for male state prisoners (254 per 100,000 prisoners) doubled that of female state prisoners (127 per 100,000). The male mortality rate declined by 4% between 2009 and 2010 while the female mortality rate declined by 20%.

Between 2001 and 2010, white state prisoners had the highest mortality rate of any race or ethnic group. It was 1.4 to 2.4 times higher than that of any other race or ethnic group in each year. Black prisoners had an AIDS-related mortality rate double that of any other race or ethnic group from 2001 through 2010.

The federal prisoner mortality rate peaked at 233 per 100,000 prisoners in 2005 before declining to 179 per 100,000 in 2010. During the entire study, the state prisoner mortality rate never dropped below 242 per 100,000.

Source: Publication No. NW 239911, available online at www.ojp.usdoj.gov

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