February 9, 2021
According to a Reuters News investigation published last October, 148 inmates housed in Oklahoma’s 11 largest county jails died from 2009 through 2019. The jails combined had an average annual mortality rate of 2.16 deaths per 1,000 inmates, the second highest in the nation behind West Virginia.
The Oklahoma County Detention Center reported an especially high number of inmate deaths. From 2016 through 2019, the jail had 40 deaths and an average annual mortality rate of 4.77 deaths per 1,000 inmates. The national average is 1.46 deaths per 1,000 inmates.
About half of Oklahoma’s jail deaths were caused by illness and another quarter by suicide. The remainder were caused by homicide, accident or substance abuse.
Local jails report inmate deaths to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics annually. However, the agency has repeatedly declined requests to make facility-level data available to the public.
By submitting more than 1,500 open records requests to local jails and government agencies, Reuters gained access to inmate death data from 523 jails in 44 states. Six states — Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Alaska, Hawaii, and Vermont — were excluded from the investigation because their state corrections department oversees pretrial detention facilities.
Jail and prison populations across the U.S. are aging, and a disproportionate number of inmates suffer from chronic medical conditions and mental illness. However, experts say a majority of inmate deaths are predictable and preventable.
In a 2017 report sponsored by the Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative, a panel of corrections administrators, researchers and health care professionals outlined policies that can help reduce inmate deaths from illness and suicide.
According to the panel, slow response time is the greatest contributor to inmate deaths from illness. They said jail and prison administrators should collect data on how quickly their officers respond to health emergencies and identify ways to increase response time.
Multiple Oklahoma inmates have died because staff failed to provide medical assistance in a timely manner.
On Jan. 8, 2019, Krysten Gonzales, 29, hanged herself inside an Oklahoma County Jail cell. The U.S. Army veteran had disclosed her post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression to jail staff, but was not being held in a mental health ward of the jail. For three months prior to her death, public defenders say they had tried to find an outpatient mental health facility that would accept Gonzales. She was in the jail after failing to appear in court on a drug possession charge.
“We should be investing in more mental health pods and psychiatric units, and minimizing the amount of time an individual spends in general population if they’re screened to have a mental illness and be suicidal,” Beaumont said. “But the real question we should be asking is what can we do to prevent people from ending up in a jail cell in the first place.”
If the nation’s jails are able to sustain low populations in a post-pandemic world, experts predict inmate deaths and mortality rates will also decrease. At least two-thirds of deaths identified in the Reuters investigation were of inmates who had not been convicted of a crime, and under most circumstances were eligible for pretrial release. Of the 148 Oklahoma inmate deaths identified in the Reuters investigation, 141 were awaiting trial and had not been convicted.
While decarceration could help reduce inmate deaths, Beaumont said state and local officials should continue to search for ways to improve medical and mental health care access inside county jails.
“Just because there has been some level of justice involvement that has led to your detention doesn’t mean you deserve any less,” he said. “I think we’re starting to have those conversations and change our views about it in Oklahoma.”
Keaton Ross is a Report for America corps member who covers prison conditions and criminal justice issues for Oklahoma Watch. Contact him at (405) 831-9753 or Kross [at] Oklahomawatch.org. Follow him on Twitter at @_KeatonRoss
To view the full article please go to https://oklahomawatch.org/2021/02/09/oklahomas-jail-mortality-rate-ranks-second-in-nation/
