In summary
Their initial story shows that people are dying in custody at record rates across California.
Statistics on people who die behind bars become a compelling story in an in-depth reporting project by Nigel Duara and Jeremia Kimelman.
To stitch together stories from across California about deaths of inmates, many of whom have not been convicted, Duara and Kimelman had to build a database drawn from more than two dozen public records requests and interviews with dozens of people.
The initial story shows that people are dying in custody at record rates across California. They’re dying in big jails and small jails, in red counties and blue counties, in rural holding cells and downtown mega-complexes. They’re dying from suicide, drug overdoses and natural causes.
Learn about what went into their work in this Q and A with Nigel and Jeremia.
Nigel Duara
What first prompted this investigation, and what stood out to you early in the reporting process?
The idea for this series started after our last project in the fall of 2022, which tracked fatal police shootings of unarmed people. In a similar vein to that project, this series involved people who hadn’t yet been convicted of anything, losing their lives at the hands of the state or in its custody.
We considered another tracker, but the data on jail deaths was only published once each year by the Justice Department. That meant that some of the deaths were 18 months old by the time we would get the numbers. As a brand new team, my editor Adam Ashton and I had to pitch something that wasn’t an easy sell: We didn’t know what we would find, and we knew it would take a long time.
But then we got the new numbers. We found that the rates of death at several jails were unprecedented in state records, which reliably go back to 2005. We started reporting the story and looking for smaller examples of broader trends — suicide hotspots; significant numbers of drug overdoses despite the closure of jails in a pandemic; years-old deaths with causes still pending. We also started to report on the state oversight board responsible for regulating jails.
My intrepid colleague Jeremia Kimelman started requesting monthly reports of jail deaths, and I think we would both encourage other newsrooms to do the same for the counties they cover. That allowed us to watch for changes in the latter half of 2023 and into this year.
You’ve worked on this story over the course of a year. What keeps you motivated throughout the work?
You really don’t get cut loose to work on 9-month projects anymore, anywhere. The chance to tell these stories, and keep reporting this story out through 2024, is plenty of motivation. Speaking to families of people who have died in jail, taking up their time with questions about one of the worst days or weeks of their lives, was motivation to get their stories right.
There are also reporters in San Diego and Riverside, among other places, who have written about this issue as it unfolded in their home counties, along with local organizations that are repeatedly bringing attention to deficiencies in their local jails. While we were able to put this in a state perspective, there are lots of people who have been living this story for years.
I should also say having a good editor who has your back, improves your copy, prods you when needed, buys you time and — most importantly — listens to you yell at a blinking cursor on a blank page for a half hour straight before saying “Alright, sounds good, good luck!” was vital to this project. So thanks, Adam.
Your reporting here includes asking pointed questions at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press conferences, examining sheriffs on deaths, interviewing attorneys who’ve worked on inmate death cases, and asking people about their experiences during jail visits. What do you find is most imperative when reporting across such a wide range?
I’ll borrow my answer from war correspondent Thom Shanker: “Don’t get lost.” That was his advice for reporters in firefights and at city council meetings. “The antithesis of life—the negation of life—is a life wasted.”
Most people are doing their best. Based on our reporting, I don’t think it’s working for everyone. These numbers can be pretty easily held at arm’s length. Compared to, say, homicides, there are relatively few deaths in jail. And the people who died are incarcerated. These deaths tend to get ignored. But it’s important to remember that the vast majority of people who died in jail had not been convicted of anything.
I found it was imperative to not get lost, though I didn’t always succeed.
In all, do you have an estimate of how many public records, interviews and data sets you reviewed for this investigation?
I probably requested at least 30, including minutes from county commission meetings and death reports from county grand juries.
Interviews: At least 70.
Jeremia Kimelman
What went into finding, retrieving and examining data for this investigation?
This investigation combines two datasets: one of deaths that occur in county jails and another that documents how many people are in each jail.
Though the death data is published online by the Department of Justice, it is outdated. It only goes through 2022. We got the most up-to-date data through public records requests.
The dataset about how many people are in each jail, the Jail Population Survey, is published by the Board of State and Community Corrections and contains an average daily population value for each county’s jail system. We were able to pull this data directly from their query tool.
How did your querying of the data surprise you and empower the investigation?
This investigation is a powerful combination of data analysis and deep reporting. The data showed us just how deadly some of the jails in California are, and we used that information to narrow down the list of counties that we wanted to focus on.
I’ve been reporting on California with data for a few years now, so I should know better, but I was struck by just how variable the death rates in different jails are. Some have persistently high numbers, and some are volatile from year to year. Some seem to have made their jails safer over time.
What do you think readers would find most surprising about the data work behind an investigation of this size?
I think readers might be surprised at how useful data can be in every stage of reporting. It is most visible in the charts and numbers in the story, but it can also help us fact-check interviews and decide where to report from next.
Nigel knew that California jails were deadly from other reporting — though I’m not sure he knew just how fatal — so once we had the spreadsheet in hand we used it to verify that deaths were increasing in recent years (they are). And then we started using it to figure out where they’re going up the most. We found several jails where the numbers were high and climbing, so Nigel went to those sheriffs and asked them to explain what was going on.
And once Nigel started hearing from sheriffs that drug overdoses were to blame, we used the data to get a sense of how accurate that sentiment might be (it was). Sometimes the best data analysis in a piece isn’t in a fancy chart. It’s woven into the story.