Every year, thousands of people incarcerated in prison die. Some deaths happen as the inevitable result of illness. Others occur as the result of injury or violence. Understanding how someone passes and communicating necessary information with the surviving loved ones is the ethical responsibility of the carceral agency. Reporting a death, however, is an enforceable legal obligation carefully enshrined in federal law. Yet, too often this responsibility is left unfulfilled.

To communicate this information with families, to inform life-saving research, and to restore dignity to the deceased, the Third City Project is attempting to fill these critical gaps in reporting. Here we offer a first-of-its-kind systems of real-time, national mortality reporting for prisons from DOC’s and alternative data sources. We happily curate datasets on requests for members of the press, advocates, and researchers. Click here to see our available datasets.