The jail systems involved in examining the custodial deaths within the state acknowledge that obstacles to better outcomes include staffing and funding challenges as well as certain jail residents with their own special challenges. Specifically, high-risk inmates with alcohol addiction, drug addiction, or mental health problems add to the complication of preventing custodial deaths.

Protection of life should be the number one focus of sheriff’s offices tasked with overseeing jails. The following is a breakdown of the types of deaths, first, at the facility with the state’s worst record for custodial deaths and, secondly, the deaths throughout the state currently under scrutiny for custodial deaths.  

A County Jail’s Death Statistics:

• 65% Suicide
• 20% Natural causes
• 10% Pending investigation
• 5% Undetermined causes

The Entire State’s Custodial Death Statistics:

• 49.86% Natural causes
• 23.93% Suicide
• 11.72% Accidental
• 8.55% Pending investigation
• 3.83% Homicide
• 1.94% Cannot be determined

A jail administrator expressed his opinion that overdoses, fatal illnesses, and suicides can be prevented if supervision is quite intensive and reliable.

Where the money comes in, the administrator says, is when there is an insufficient number of jail staff members and when life-saving retrofits cost money. For instance, changing the venting system so that it cannot be used by inmates to commit suicide by hanging themselves is important and yet at the same time can be cost-prohibitive.

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and continuing posts in this series about jails with high rates of custodial deaths in a state outside of Texas.

The posts on this site purpose to provide information. There is no intent for this or any of the posts on this site to suggest that any individual or institution has engaged in wrongdoing.

–Guest Contributor