jail deaths

Since 2000, more than 200 people have died by suicide in Washington and Oregon jails putting the Northwest states above the national average for jail suicides, according to a new report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

For the second time in less than a year, Washington’s Corrections Ombuds (OCO) is warning that the state’s prison system needs to do more to prevent inmate suicides. In a 15-page investigation released Monday, the OCO found that two inmates died by suicide in 2020 after prison staff failed to recognize signs of mental distress and didn’t follow suicide prevention policies.

Coyote Ridge has the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases of any Washington state prison. The outbreak is concentrated within the Medium Security Complex portion of the prison, which houses more than 1,800 inmates. The total prison population is typically more than 2,400.

In a dramatic example of COVID-19’s impact on the criminal justice system, the number of people in Washington jails has plummeted in recent weeks, ending virtually overnight an overcrowding problem that plagued many facilities for years. Today, a few of the state’s smallest jails are reporting inmate populations in the single digits.

Umatilla County is home to two large state prisons, which hold more than 3,500 inmates between them. The petitions are a last resort for inmates who need things like medical equipment and procedures that have been denied.

In other words, jail deaths are a local matter. It’s up to the jail director, the sheriff or other county officials to decide how an in-custody death should be investigated. The state has no role and no oversight of that investigation. The result is jail death investigations have no guarantee of independence, oversight or necessarily accountability.

The state of Washington has agreed to pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of a 29-year-old man who died by suicide in an isolation cell at the Airway Heights Corrections Center near Spokane in May 2014.

Between 2008 and 2018, suicide accounted for 47% of jail deaths with a known cause in Oregon and Washington, according to an investigation by OPB, KUOW and the Northwest News Network. But an analysis shows the region’s prisons aren’t plagued by the same crisis.

Between 2008 and 2018, more than 300 people died after being taken to a county jail in Washington or Oregon, according to an investigation earlier this year by OPB, KUOW and the Northwest News Network. Nearly half died by suicide.

Deaths in the Whatcom County Jail highlight two stark realities: Native Americans are disproportionately more likely to be in Northwest jails. As a result, they are also more likely to die in jail.