Prison deaths up, experts offer recommendations in new study

Deaths behind bars are on the rise, and a recently released RAND study offered dozens of recommendations to combat everything from suicide to illness. Deaths behind bars are on the rise, and a recently released RAND study offered dozens of recommendations to combat everything from suicide to illness. Photo: RAND Photo: RAND Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Prison deaths up, experts offer recommendations in new study 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Deaths behind bars are on the rise, and a recently released study offers dozens of recommendations to combat everything from suicide to illness.

The number of inmates who died while locked up has increased every year since 2010, reaching 4,980 in 2014. State prisoners saw a higher death rate in 2014 - 275 per 10,000 - than any other year since data collection started in 2001. Suicides in particular spiked, with a 30 percent increase from 2013 to 2014.

That's all according to Bureau of Justice Statistic data compiled in RAND's "Caring for those in Custody" report. The recommendations are the fruits of a multiyear research effort sponsored by the National Institute of Justice to understand the rising death rate. A panel of 16 correctional administrators, researchers and healthcare workers collaborated over the course of a two-day workshop to identify 121 needs for reducing mortality.

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"The challenges are daunting," the report notes. "However, most forms of mortality in correctional facilities are predictable and therefore preventable."

Suicides are less common in prisons but have been the leading cause of deaths in jails every year since 2000. Accordingly, the experts recommended evidence-based suicide prevention strategies, expanded use of surveillance cameras, incentivized retrofitting of cells to reduce risk and more research around prison suicide.

Homicides are hard to predict and relatively rare, the report found. In state facilities, the rate is 7 per 100,000 - about 2.4 percent of in-custody deaths. Those numbers are also on the rise in recent years, but only after a long-term downward trend. In jails, the numbers are pretty stable and a little lower.

The experts also looked at methods for reducing substance-related deaths, accidental deaths and deaths from illness and disease, which account for the majority of prison fatalities.

Click here to check out the full report.