Death in Police Custody Statistics

The Data Problem

No single, reliable database tracks every death in police custody in the United States. The numbers that exist come from overlapping, incomplete, and methodologically different data collection systems — each with blind spots that obscure the true scope of the problem.

This isn't a minor recordkeeping gap. It shapes policy, public perception, and the experience of every family trying to understand whether what happened to their loved one is part of a larger pattern.

US Custody Death Data

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) collected correctional mortality data through its Mortality in Correctional Institutions (MCI) program, formerly called the Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (DCRP). It reported local-jail deaths from 2000 to 2019 and state-prison deaths from 2001 to 2019. In 2019, BJS reported 1,200 deaths in local jails and 3,853 deaths in state prisons or private prisons under state contract.

The Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 was enacted in 2014 and requires states receiving Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant funds to report custody deaths quarterly. State reporting is administered separately by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), which began collecting state data in fiscal year 2020. BJA's published tables cover fiscal years 2020–2024 and warn that reporting gaps limit completeness and make state and year-to-year comparisons unreliable. The Act authorizes the Department of Justice to withhold up to 10% of a state's grant funds for noncompliance.

Arrest-related deaths — people who die during the process of arrest, before they ever reach a jail cell — were collected separately from jail and prison deaths. BJS collected arrest-related death data from 2003 to 2012; its assessment found the collection captured only about 50% of estimated law-enforcement homicides. BJS suspended that collection in 2014 over data-quality and coverage concerns. Since fiscal year 2020, states have reported deaths during arrest through BJA's broader Death in Custody Reporting Act system, which also has reporting gaps.

Independent tracking projects fill some of the gaps. Organizations and newsrooms combine media reports, public records requests, and crowdsourced information, often using a broader definition than official datasets. Their totals may be higher and are not directly comparable; these projects can also identify deaths missing from official reporting.

England and Wales Custody Death Data

England and Wales have separate official reporting systems for deaths during or following police contact and deaths in prisons and immigration detention.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) publishes annual statistics on deaths during or following police contact in England and Wales. In 2025/26, it recorded 27 deaths in or following police custody.

The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) investigates deaths of prisoners in England and Wales and people in immigration detention across the UK. In 2025/26, it began investigations into 455 deaths: 354 in prisons, 83 post-release, 13 in probation approved premises, none in the immigration removal estate, and five discretionary cases.

The charity INQUEST has maintained a casework database of deaths in state custody since 1981. Their data reveals patterns that official statistics don't always highlight: the disproportionate number of Black men who die following police restraint, the prevalence of mental health crises as a precipitating factor, and the gap between coroner findings and criminal prosecutions.

What the Numbers Hide

Aggregate statistics obscure several realities that matter to families:

Race statistics need the right comparison. In BJS's 2019 local-jail data, non-Hispanic White inmates had a higher mortality rate than non-Hispanic Black inmates (256 versus 136 deaths per 100,000 inmates). That dataset does not include deaths during arrest; IOPC statistics for England and Wales use separate categories for deaths in or following police custody and other deaths following police contact. Compare like-for-like categories and use the relevant custody population as the denominator.

Cause-of-death classifications vary wildly. A death classified as "natural causes" in jail may involve severe medical neglect — an untreated seizure, a delayed response to diabetic emergency, an ignored mental health crisis. "Suicide" in custody raises questions about whether the facility met minimum standards for mental health screening and monitoring. The classification itself can mask institutional failures.

"During or following police contact" is broad. IOPC statistics for England and Wales distinguish between deaths in custody (the person was formally detained) and deaths following police contact (which includes people who die after being released, during a pursuit, or during a welfare check). US categories are similarly ambiguous. A family whose loved one died during a prone restraint and a family whose loved one had a heart attack in a holding cell appear in the same statistical column.

Reporting gaps and methodology changes make trends unreliable. BJS's MCI series ended with 2019 data; BJA's state-reported series began in fiscal year 2020 and uses a different collection system. BJA cautions that reporting gaps and variation in state collection methods limit year-to-year and state-to-state comparisons.

Why Statistics Matter to Individual Families

Families processing a custody death often search for statistics to answer a specific question: "Is this normal? Does this happen to other people, or is what happened to us unique?"

The answer, almost always, is that it happens far more often than most people realize, and that the family's experience of institutional defensiveness, delayed information, and narrative-shaping by the involved agency is not unique to their case — it's a documented pattern.

Understanding the systemic context doesn't reduce the personal pain, but it can validate a family's instinct that something is wrong with the process they're navigating. When the agency says the death was unavoidable, and the data shows hundreds of structurally similar deaths each year, the family is right to ask harder questions.

For the complete step-by-step framework on what to do after a custody death — from evidence preservation and independent autopsies to filing notice of claim and navigating the legal process — the After a Death in Police Custody guide walks through each phase in order.