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.Read More
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.Read More
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.Read More
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.Read More
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.Read More
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.Read More
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.Read More
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.Read More
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.Read More
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. Read More
The practice of locking up people who are chronically sick, mentally ill or drug addicted in under-resourced city, county and regional jails in Washington is resulting in inmate deaths and a failure to “treat all people humanely, respectfully, and safely,” according to a new report by the statewide nonprofit law firm Columbia Legal Services.Read More
Four years ago this month, Keaton Farris died naked, dehydrated and malnourished on the floor of an isolation cell in the Island County Jail on Whidbey Island. Farris, who was bipolar and in the throes of a mental health crisis, had been arrested 18 days earlier for failing to appear in court for allegedly stealing and cashing a $355 check. An investigation later found Read More
Over the past decade, at least 122 people have died by suicide in county jails across Oregon and Washington. Suicide, specifically hanging, is by far the leading single cause of deaths in the region’s jails. It accounts for nearly half of all cases with a known cause of death.Read More
Across Oregon and Washington, at least 70 percent of the inmates who died since 2008 were awaiting trial, rather than serving time. Civil liberties advocates have long expressed concern over jailing people on low-level crimes that have root causes of mental illness, drug addiction or lack of stable employment.Read More
Incomplete data tracking hides a crisis of rising death rates in overburdened Northwest jails that have been set up to fail the inmates they are tasked with keeping safe.Read More
