People who die in prisons, jails and other forms of government custody are often denied the dignity and protections afforded to other decedents in the United States, according to a new study.
Key Takeaways
- A Princeton study finds widespread gaps in policies protecting people who die in government custody
- New Jersey ranks among the top states but lacks a deadline for identifying deceased individuals
- Researchers recommend stronger family notification, religious protections, accountability and transparency, while warning policies alone cannot ensure compliance
The 442-page report, conducted by the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs’ Policy Advocacy Clinic, says government fails decedents who were incarcerated at the time of death and their families in five ways:
- Dignity of a person’s intrinsic value and rights
- Respect for family rights
- Respect for religious practices
- Accountability for government failures
- Transparency
“The dignity owed to a person does not end at death,” the report states. “Whether someone dies in state custody or leaves behind a digital presence online, the treatment of their body, memory, and remains reflects how fully we recognize their humanity.”
States’ and U.S. territories’ policies on the handling of decedents who were incarcerated vary in significant ways, the report concludes. Based on 58 metrics established in the report to gauge each jurisdiction’s response to a death while incarcerated, California, New Jersey and New York scored the highest. Wyoming ranked the worst among the 50 states, the report concluded.
The study’s findings present a bleak picture of how those who die in custody are treated. A press release on the study cited these shortcomings:
Disrespect of personhood in disposition decisions: 81 percent of jurisdictions fail to explicitly recognize the deceased’s wishes with regards to disposition, including cremation.
Disrespect of families: 45 percent of jurisdictions do not provide a clear timeline for family notification of a death in custody.
Disrespect of religion: Less than half of jurisdictions address religious practices in notification, disposition, and burial. Only about 25 percent of jurisdictions consider religious objections to autopsies, and only 13 jurisdictions have a policy authorizing or respecting the religious need for burial, rather than cremation.
Lack of accountability: Nearly 60 percent of jurisdictions lack internal mortality reviews and independent oversight bodies and nearly 73 percent of jurisdictions do not recognize a right to a private autopsy.
Lack of transparency. Nearly 85 percent of jurisdictions don’t require public reporting for deaths in custody.
The problem with treatment of deaths in custody is not small, the study concludes.
“At least 26,345 people died in prisons and jails in the United States from 2020 to 2024, and 10,818 of these deaths were attributed to unlawful, unnatural or unknown causes,” the report states.
New Jersey ranked particularly high in decedent identification, according to the study.
“New Jersey policy establishes a strong identification procedure by assigning an actor and listing at least three methods of identification that include positive identification and digital registry access,” the report states. “However, it lacks a timeline for identification.”
The report stresses that strong policies do not mean consistent implementation of regulations, a point driven home by academics studying prisons and incarceration.
“Having the policies is a good first step, and they need to be effective and meaningful policies, but that's no guarantee the policies will get followed,” Michele Deitch, the director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas, Austin, said in an article by The Marshall Project.
The study concludes that best practices for the treatment of deaths in custody is an amalgam of the strongest policies in several states. No one state has an ideal system, the report says. Among the recommendations are stronger policies on notifications to families, a greater recognition of religious preferences for funeral services, a right to autopsies, preservation of evidence concerning the circumstances of the death, the return of personal property and investigations of deaths.
Deitch told The Marshall Report that the study had value in identifying best practices and areas where each jurisdiction might be lacking.
“Reports like this provide a baseline of the landscape of this issue,” Deitch said. “It's a way to allow states to compare themselves to each other, for advocates to and policy makers to look at how else things could be done, if there are better ways to do them, to realize the gaps in their own policies.”