An investigation conducted by The Arizona Republic revealed that the jail system in Maricopa County has one of the nation's highest mortality rates in the country. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office operates five jails, as well as an intake, transfer and release facility. The Republic requested the total numbers, identities and causes of death for everyone who died in the custody of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office from 2019 to 2023. The number of deaths in the Maricopa County jails increased dramatically over the past five years while the average daily population has declined. That has led to a rate of death more than four times higher than the national average, The Arizona Republic reports. The average daily jail population in Maricopa County was 6,829 in 2019 but decreased to 5,433 in 2020 during the pandemic. By 2023, it had risen to 6,569. In 2019, there were 11 deaths, and in 2022, 43 deaths occurred, with over a quarter being suicides.
Forty-three more people died in the jails in 2023. Scholars who study in-custody deaths in U.S. jails and prisons said those numbers are incredibly high when compared with similarly sized jail systems and even jails with much larger populations. “Astronomical,” in the words of one researcher. In 2019, the most recent year the federal government calculated jail mortality, there was an average of 167 deaths per 100,000 inmates in county jails in America. The death rate in Maricopa County jails in 2019 was 161 per 100,000, slightly lower than the national average. But that rate quadrupled in just three years to 678 in 2022. With 43 deaths in 2023 and a population of around 6,569, the most recent death rate for the Maricopa County jails was 654 deaths per 100,000 inmates. Drug overdoses, drug withdrawals and suicides were among the leading causes of death in the past five years in Maricopa County jails. The Sheriff's Office said it was working to bring the death rate down, and a representative for the county's Board of Supervisors suggested the opioid epidemic was a contributing factor, pointing to an overall increase in drug-related deaths in the county.
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