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Photo courtesy DepositPhotos.
Overdose deaths among incarcerated people starkly increased in Louisiana — from 2.31 percent in 2015 to 11.92 percent in 2021 — just one sample of the findings from Loyola University’s College of Law incarceration transparency project.
Loyola’s “Louisiana Deaths Behind Bars 2015-2021” report, led by Professor Andrea Armstrong and approximately 100 law students, compiled data on the 1,168 deaths of incarcerated people in Louisiana’s jail and prison populations from the study’s seven-year span. While medical conditions were the primary cause of death for inmates within the study’s total timeframe, suicides, violent deaths and drug overdoses all experienced spikes within the last several years. Additionally, 13.4 percent of all known deaths were of inmates being held pre-trial, or essentially not yet convicted of a crime.
Armstrong, lead investigator for the Deaths Behind Bars in Louisiana project, says the data reveals a deleterious impact from the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality rates. According to Loyola’s most recent report released this summer, deaths increased overall in 2020 and 2021, and the rates of unnatural deaths — suicides, drug overdoses and violence-related — also experienced their highest rates during that same period.
“COVID had an enormous impact on the jail and prison environment,” said Armstrong. “In trying to understand why we see more drug overdoses, violent deaths, and suicide deaths during those years is in part related to the COVID changes that happened in these environments: Less visitation and (for certain periods) no visitation, less programming, fewer staffing members … folks with chronic diseases for instance, that may have meant that medical staff was stretched too thin to provide that type of care that chronic diseases really require.”
Lockdown increases, fentanyl overdoses contribute to deaths
Drug deaths ramping up during COVID-19 — a time in which lockdowns were more stringent – should not be overlooked, Armstrong said.
Since issuing the report, Armstrong said she continues to receive information about fentanyl overdoses behind bars. She attributes the spikes in part to fentanyl being deadlier and flooding facilities because it “is very small and can be more easily smuggled in.”
“We really need to ask questions about the drug overdoses, about how the contraband is entering. Remember, in 2020 and 2021, a lot of these facilities were closed to outside visitors and programmatic staff,” Armstrong said. “To see that sharp of a rise in drug overdose deaths behind bars, which are supposed to be secure facilities, at the same time that many of these facilities were closed to outsiders, raises questions about how these drugs are getting in behind bars.“
Suicides also ramped up in 2021 with the rate jumping to 8.29 percent of all deaths — the highest of all seven years — and a 6.68-percent average for the reporting years. Data shows that 42 percent of jail suicides in that time period happened within the first four weeks of admission and the majority skewed female. Pre-trial detainees were 46 percent of total suicides.
Incarceration snapshot
The average age and gender of a person dying in Louisiana’s jails or prisons is a black male aged 55 who is serving a post-conviction sentence.
Men were 95.8 percent of all deaths, which broke down to nearly 58 percent of deaths being African-American males, and white male deaths representing 40.5 percent of the total. Nearly 4 percent of the deaths were female. Eighty-one percent of the deaths were from “medical cause,” while nearly 7 percent were due to suicide.
Building on their first report issued in 2021 which looked at incarcerated deaths from 2015-2019, Louisiana parish jails accounted for 25 percent of all known deaths between 2015-2021, and were the locations for the majority of accidental deaths, suicides and overdoses.
Louisiana’s eight prisons, where convicted citizens serve out their sentences, are operated by the state Department of Public Safety Corrections. Louisiana jails are operated by local sheriffs’ departments, primarily, though multiple jails are operated by LaSalle Corrections, a private contractor. As an additional detail of population housing, according to the report, “Louisiana is relatively unique in the U.S. for using local jails to house approximately 50 percent of people serving their state sentence.”
Deaths among incarcerated women was highest in 2017 with a peak of 12 deaths. The percentage of white women dying is higher than that of black women, at a 5.49 percentage compared to 2.68 percent, respectively.
Following the 2016 flooding of the women’s prison at St. Gabriel, women primarily are serving their sentences in local jails with 65 percent of the female prison population housed in local jails as of 2021.
Armstrong and her students collected and analyzed the data they received via public records requests. As the report notes, Louisiana’s prisons, jails and detention centers operate without independent oversight, mandatory standards or public transparency. They are only required to report deaths of people serving sentences to the coroner; parish jails only have to report deaths of people detained pending trial to their local coroner.
While 95 percent of the 122 facilities reported their deaths between the Fall 2019 to Fall 2022 survey period, Armstrong fears 2020 changes to the 2013 federal Death in Custody Reporting Act, which limited the specificity of the data that is collected, could affect the ability to obtain information going forward. The state legislature however could pass a law empowering an agency such as the Louisiana Department of Health to collect that data, she said.
“It’s interesting to think about what would a partnership look like between the Louisiana Department of Health, Louisiana Department of Corrections, and Louisiana Sheriff’s Association,” said Armstrong. “We think this is really important information and so we’re committed to doing it, but it’s not really our job. Part of this [project] is also to demonstrate this can be done if we put the resources toward it.”
There is value to this information, Armstrong continued. From the people who are dying pre-trial, either in the first week of their arrest or others who are dying several months into their detention, to the incarcerated individuals in the state’s prison systems — and even others whose deaths go unreported — it is unthinkable the taxpaying citizenry would not have access to this data.
“These people are human beings and these are members of our community who are dying,” said Armstrong. “Everybody who is in jail or prison belongs to somebody. We know very little. It’s hard to imagine a public school for instance refusing to offer information about a serious incident in a school building. Because we are taxpayers, because our children are there. And yet prisons and jails are not held to the same standards of transparency that our public schools are, and that’s concerning for me.”
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