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7,000 Deaths in Custody
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Atlantic
Posted: July 31st, 2016
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/7000-dea...
Between 2005 and 2015, 6,913 people died while in legal custody in Texas. Many died of natural causes while serving long prison sentences. Others ended their own lives. A few died at the hands of another inmate, or, in some cases, police or correctional officers. Together, these deaths form revealing patterns about Texas-style justice and the state of corrections in an increasingly carceral country. This information used to be hard to access, but its now readily available in an online database called the Texas Justice Initiative. The final product was culled from thousands of internal reports and includes names, time and place of death, cause of death, time in custody, and a description of the circumstances. These deaths occurred in local jail cells, in the backs of police cars, and on prison sidewalks, [project creator Amanda] Woog wrote in the summary report of her findings. Among the suicide listings is one for Sandra Bland, who died in police custody after a traffic stop. Like Bland, more than 1,900 of those who died, or 28 percent, had not been convicted of or even charged with a crime. Pre-booking deaths reported by law enforcement have been on the rise since 2005. The data gathered on Texas reflects a markedly high number of deaths in custody compared to national trends.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in police departments and in the prison system.
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