‘Prison sentences became death sentences’
Experts cite many health impacts of being incarcerated
After spending 38 years in the Alabama prison system, one of the most violent and crowded in the nation, Larry Jordan felt lucky to live long enough to regain his freedom.
The decorated Vietnam War veteran had survived prostate cancer and hepatitis C behind bars when a judge granted him early release in late 2022.
“I never gave up hope,” said Jordan, 74. “I know a lot of people in prison who did.”
At least 6,182 people died in state and federal prisons in 2020, a 46% jump from the previous year, according to data from researchers at the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project.
“During the pandemic, a lot of prison sentences became death sentences,” said Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative, which conducts research and data analysis on the criminal justice system.
Jordan worries about his longevity. He struggles with pain in his legs and feet caused by a potentially life-threatening vascular blockage, and research suggests that prison quickens the aging process.
Life expectancy fell in the U.S. in 2021 for the second year in a row, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The decline is linked to the effects of COVID-19 and a monumental spike in drug overdoses.
Some experts and activists say the trend underscores the lasting health consequences of mass incarceration in a nation with roughly 2 million imprisoned or jailed people, one of
the highest rates in the developed world.
A 2022 Senate report found that the U.S. Department of Justice failed to identify more than 900 deaths in prisons and local jails in fiscal 2021.
The report said poor data collection and reporting undermined transparency and congressional oversight of deaths in custody.
Thousands of people like Jordan are released from prisons and jails every year with such conditions as cancer, heart disease and infectious diseases they developed while incarcerated. The issue hits hard in Alabama, Louisiana and other Southeastern states.
A major reason the U.S. trails other developed countries in life expectancy is that it puts more people behind bars and keeps them there far longer, said Chris Wildeman, a Duke University sociology professor who
has researched the link between criminal justice and life expectancy.
“It’s a health strain on the population,” Wildeman said. “The worse the prison conditions, the more likely it is incarceration can be tied to excess mortality.”
Mass incarceration has a ripple effect across society.
Incarcerated people may be more susceptible than the general population to infectious diseases, such as COVID-19 and AIDS, that can spread to others once they are released. The U.S. government has also failed to collect or release enough data about deaths in custody that could be used to identify disease patterns and prevent fatalities and illness inside and outside institutions, researchers said.
Over a 40-year span starting in the 1980s, the number of people in the nation’s prisons and jails more than quadrupled,
fueled by tough-on-crime policies and the war on drugs.
Federal lawmakers and states such as Alabama have passed reforms in recent years amid bipartisan agreement that prison costs have grown too high and that some people could be released without posing a risk to public safety.
The changes come too late and haven’t gone far enough to curb the worst effects on health, some say. Still, no one has proven that incarceration alone shortens life expectancy. But research from the early 2000s put the death rate for people leaving prison was 3.5 times higher than for the rest of the population in the first few years after release. Experts found deaths from drug use, violence and lapses in access to health care were especially high in the first two weeks after release.
Another study found that currently or formerly incarcerated Black people had a 65% higher mortality rate than their non-Black peers. Black people make up a disproportionately high percentage of state prison populations.
The enactment in 2000 of the Death in Custody Reporting Act, and its reauthorization in 2014, required the DOJ to collect information about deaths in state and local jails and prisons. The information is supposed to include details on time and location of death, demographic data on the deceased, the agency involved and the manner of death.
But a recent report from the Government Accountability Office found that 70% of the records the DOJ received were incomplete. Officials also lacked a plan to take corrective action against states that didn’t meet reporting requirements, the GAO found.
The deficiency in data means the federal government can’t definitively say how many people have died in prisons and jails since the pandemic began, researchers said.
“Without data, we are operating in the dark,” said Andrea Armstrong, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, who has testified to Congress on the issue. She said federal and state officials need the data to identify institutions failing to provide proper health care, nutritious food or other services that can save lives.
The DOJ did not respond to requests for interviews regarding the GAO report. In a statement, agency officials said they were working with law enforcement and state officials to overcome barriers to full and accurate reporting.
Jordan served 38 years of a 40-year sentence for reckless murder stemming from a car accident, which his lawyer argued in his petition for early release was one of the longest sentences in Alabama history for the crime. A jury had found him guilty of being drunk while driving a vehicle that crashed, killing a man. If he were convicted today, he would be eligible to receive a sentence as short as 13 years behind bars because he has no prior felony history, wrote Alabama Circuit Judge Stephen Wallace, who reviewed Jordan’s petition for early release.
On Sept. 26, 2022, Wallace signed an order releasing Jordan from prison under a rule that allows Alabama courts to reconsider sentences.
A few months later, Jordan said, he had surgery to treat the vascular blockage that was restricting blood flow to his left leg and left foot. He said he did not receive treatment for it in prison: “You could see my foot dying.”