Explore Data on In-Custody Deaths
State law requires a law enforcement agency or agency in charge of a correctional facility, including county sheriff departments, to report any case in which a person dies in their custody to the Office of the Attorney General within 10 days after the death. The California Department of Justice collects and posts to its website data pertaining to these in-custody deaths. In addition, the Board of State and Community Corrections collects and posts to its website jail population trends, such as the average daily population, from self-reported data. The average daily population represents the number of incarcerated individuals housed in a jail system for any given day over a period of time and is used to determine whether a jail is operating at or near capacity. We present these interactive dashboards to enable users to view statewide data and additional detail regarding deaths in sheriff’s department’s detention facilities.
Source: Analysis of deaths in custody data obtained from the California Department of Justice's Open Justice data portal and average daily population data obtained from the Board of State and Community Corrections Data and Research website.