A prison or jail sentence should never be a death sentence. And yet, far too often and for far too many people, it is. Two years ago, the UCLA Covid Behind Bars Data Project expanded its national mission. The Project pivoted from tracking Covid cases and deaths inside prisons, jails, and detention centers to a focus on all-cause carceral mortality.

A disturbing new report from The New Yorker, produced in collaboration with the Investigative Reporting Lab at Yale, found that more than fifty people have died from starvation while in custody in American jails over the past decade and a half.

In February 2023, investigative journalists at the New York Times analyzed carceral death data collected by the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project for the years 2019-2021. In their published findings, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Allie Pitchon reported an almost 50% jump in prison deaths in the wake of Covid and assessed possible reasons for the substantial increase. See below for the full article.