A little late to this, but it's well worth sharing: Dying Behind Bars: At least 220 people died in Ohio jails over 4 years cincinnati.com/story/news/cri… via @enquirer

A lot to unpack but Dauphin County Prison has been seizing incarcerated people’s legal work, making copies of it and sending the papers to the DAs office for drug testing. We’ve spoken to numerous people who had privileged docs go missing in the process pennlive.com/news/2024/06/w…

EXCLUSIVE: Investigation finds "ASTRONOMICAL" death rate in Maricopa County jails. With 43 deaths in 2022 and 43 in 2023, they are among the deadliest jails in the country. But you wouldn't know that, because the deaths were underreported — until now. azcentral.com/story/news/loc…

Maricopa County jails are TWICE as deadly as Rikers Island. Today’s must read 👇

This is deep, important, thoughtful reporting on the staggering mortality rate in Maricopa County’s jails—and the failures of transparency that concealed it—from Jimmy Jenkins. Grateful to have had the opportunity to weigh in alongside Andrea Armstrong and Jay D. Aronson.

Excellent investigative reporting by Jimmy Jenkins about the unconscionable level of deaths in the Maricopa County jails. Deaths in custody are a window into what’s happening behind bars, and with so many deaths going unreported, the public and policymakers are kept in the dark.

When I presented our findings to the state agency in charge of collecting in-custody death statistics, they said "Those numbers can't be right. If there were that many deaths in the jails, it would be a huge news story." "It's about to be," I replied. x.com/JimmyJenkins/s…

A review by The Arizona Republic of Maricopa County's in-custody jail deaths from 2019 through 2023 found the death rate was among the highest of major jail systems in the country, and four times the national average.

The death rate for Maricopa County jails in 2023 was twice as high as jails with similar populations, as well as jail systems with much larger populations.

Deaths have skyrocketed in Maricopa County jails in recent years, even while the average daily population has decreased. The number of deaths in the Maricopa County jails nearly quadrupled in three years. In 2019, there were 11 deaths in the jails. In 2022 and 2023, there were 43

In 2019, that meant seven deaths went unreported to the commission. In 2020, 17 deaths went unreported. In 2021, it was 24.

We have compiled a database of all those who died in the Maricopa County jails from 2019-2023: 143 that we are aware of. azcentral.com/story/news/loc…

Briefly suspending my silence on this platform to boost the incredible and gut wrenching work of Jimmy Jenkins on deaths in Maricopa County jails, where most public officials seem uninterested in the problem. Jails there function exactly as intended: out of sight, out of mind.

Prof. Jay D. Aronson of Carnegie Mellon University, who literally wrote the book on deaths in custody, said the death rate in the Maricopa County jails seemed almost impossible to believe: “I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but there are a hell of a lot of people dying.”

Andrea Armstrong, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, was equally alarmed by the numbers. “I feel confident in saying the mortality rate in Maricopa County jails is astronomical," Armstrong said.

Littman said the federal government's failure to properly collect and analyze death in custody data means incarcerated people are “dying in the dark.”

“How can we even begin to discuss preventive measures when we don’t have the most fundamental information like how many people are dying, who are they and why did they die?” Littman asked.

This was my best effort — 10 months of reporting — to identify all those who died in the Maricopa County jails in recent years. If you support this kind of journalism, and you have the means, please subscribe to our newspaper. azcentral.com/story/news/loc…

Excited to see this spotlight on our work forcing sheriffs to report custody deaths as mandated by state law. Since 2023, we Texas Jail Project discovered 18 custody deaths that had gone unreported to the TX OAG. We forced 14 of them to be reported, including one from 2018!

cc: Carnegie Mellon University. Our new “Expressive Activity Registration Policy” is shameful, embarrassing, and antithetical to everything our institution claims to stand for. We should just stop pretending to be anything but an investment and real estate firm if this is the new norm.