A scathing U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation confirmed something people incarcerated in Georgia have long known: The state routinely hides the number of people killed inside its prisons.
The spike in deaths coincides with multiple federal probes into prisons and jails across Georgia.
The state launched an investigation after the former chief medical examiner’s biased testimony in the George Floyd murder trial. Now, an Appeal analysis finds major flaws in the probe’s design.
BOP Director Colette Peters blamed understaffing and “crumbling” facilities for the increasing number of deaths in federal prisons during hearings last week.
An official investigation released this week concluded that “medical neglect” contributed to Alan Willison’s death at the Clayton County Jail in January, just a week after his cancer diagnosis.
Graphic video footage obtained by The Appeal shows 29-year-old Joshua McLemore wasting away and rolling in his own waste in the Jackson County Jail before eventually dying of malnutrition.
Thousands of deaths in jails, prisons, and police custody have gone uncounted in recent years. Now the DOJ is calling for changes to federal law.
Our team at the University of North Carolina analyzed death-in-custody reporting policies at every state and federal carceral entity. Data collection is a mess—and many states don’t follow the law at all.
All lawmakers have a duty to use every available lever to reduce the number of people in prison, whether by compassionate release or expanded use of furloughs or some other mechanism. Taking these steps will demand immense political courage. But not doing it means consigning people—some just months away from release—to die preventable deaths.
The Department of Justice is leaving researchers, policymakers, and advocates in the dark about deaths in police custody, prisons, and jails.