Inmate Health - Death Rates Of Prisoners

Data on the health status of inmates in prisons and jails are not routinely collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). There are some exceptions. Surveys of prisoners conducted at intervals include questions about health. Since 1990 BJS has also collected data on the prevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) and has reported its findings on an annual basis. Estimates of prisoners' health conditions were developed by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) and published in a report to Congress (The Health Status of Soon-to-Be-Released Inmates, Chicago, IL, 2002). These estimates, however, were not based on actual examinations of prison or jail inmates but were, instead, projections developed using studies of the general population with the results allocated to the prison population based on the economic, gender, and racial/ethnic composition of prisoners and inmates of jails.

An indirect measure of the health status of inmates is provided by mortality data that BJS makes available as part of its HIV/AIDS reporting. Table 6.1 shows deaths and death rates by cause of death in state prisons for the years 1995 and 2002. In 2002 the death rate from natural causes, excluding AIDS, was 190 per 100,000 inmates. When deaths from AIDS are added, the rate was 207. In federal prisons (see Table 6.2), the 2002 death rate from natural causes, excluding AIDS, was 179 per 100,000 inmates. When deaths from AIDS are added, the rate was 190.

In the 1995–2002 period, the overall death rate (all causes combined) generally dropped in prisons as in the general population. The state prison overall death rate declined from 311 per 100,000 inmates in 1995 to 246 in 2002. Within the state prison population, the most dramatic change was the sharply dropping death rate from AIDS. Deaths per 100,000 declined from one hundred in 1995 to seventeen in 2002, with the rates dropping every year.