More Than Half Of Federal Inmate Deaths In An 8-Year Span Were Caused By Suicide: Report

The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General finds that "recurring policy violations and operational failures contributed to inmate suicides."

More than half of the deaths of inmates in the federal prison system were caused by suicide from 2014 and 2021, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General found in a report released Thursday.

There are about 155,000 inmates in 194 Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities. Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, examined 344 deaths across the facilities during an eight-year span and found that 187 of them were suicides. The report “found that a combination of recurring policy violations and operational failures contributed to inmate suicides.”

Homicides followed death by suicide, accounting for 89 deaths, and accidents were blamed in 56 deaths. The causes remained unknown in 12 deaths.

Hanging, drug overdoses and blunt force trauma were the leading causes of death, the report found.

“We also found that some institution staff failed to coordinate efforts across departments to provide necessary treatment or follow-up with inmates in distress and that staff did not sufficiently conduct required rounds or counts in over a third of the inmate suicides in our scope,” the report said.