Title: How often do prisoners die behind bars? - The Washington Post
Headings: How often do prisoners die behind bars?
How often do prisoners die behind bars?
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Content: An average of about a dozen inmates die each day, according to the Justice Department. About 4,400 jail and prison inmates die every year, federal statistics show, a tally that does not include executions (which are infrequent, numbering in the dozens each year and adding up to just a fraction of all other inmate deaths). Advertisement
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Most of these deaths occur in state prisons, where 3,351 inmates died in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. State prisons have the largest inmate populations, accounting for a little more than half of all inmates in custody that year. [ Prosecutor on Sandra Bland autopsy: No evidence ‘to indicate that this is a homicide’]
In local jails, 958 inmates died in 2012, but the causes of these deaths were very different from the causes cited in state prison deaths. Suicide is the leading cause of death for inmates in local jails, accounting for nearly a third of all deaths. ( Heart disease is the second-leading cause of death.) Story continues below advertisement
Suicides are cited as the cause far less often in state prisons, where cancer is the leading cause of death. Heart disease and other illnesses are listed as the cause in most other deaths.