The database that Gary Harki and his reporting team found in Texas that lists all deaths that have occurred in jail custody in Texas is available here. As they describe in their “How I Did It” Q&A, the team relied on information from this database as part of building their own information bank about the people with mental health conditions who have died in U.S. jails. They also created a clickable map (in 2018) linking to data and data tables from the handful of other states that provide this kind of information. The interactive database that they built of the 404 people who had died in U.S. jails since 2010 is available here. There is no federal database.
Reporting on prisons is typically a beat for criminal justice reporters, but as more research reveals failures in prison health care systems, the mental health effects of solitary confinement and the abuses of some private, for-profit prisons, it is increasingly becoming a beat for health reporters as well. The measles outbreak in Arizona in the summer of 2016, for example, highlighted low immunization rates and inadequate rules and oversight regarding employee vaccinations.
One of the best places to start is the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, which has statistics and costs on total correctional population, prison population, jail population, probation population and parole population. All their annual surveys are archived here as well as various reports on recidivism, capital punishment, sexual assault in prison, deaths in custody and related topics.
A wealth of worldwide comparative information is available at the International Centre for Prison Studies, “an online database comprising information on prisons and the use of imprisonment around the world” that has recently merged with the Institute for Criminal Policy Research. They have a 15-page fact sheet full of big-picture states, and their world prison briefs provide contact information for prison systems in every country in the world as well as statistics on overall prison population and rate; juvenile, female, foreign and pre-trial populations and rates; system institutions and capacity; and trends over time. They also have a section on research and publications worth perusing if you’re seeking general information or aren’t sure what you need yet.
A report from the U.S. Department of Justice offers a detailed breakdown of prison and parole/probation populations in the U.S. from 2000 through 2014, including a per-state breakdown. A National Academies Press publication provides an overview of causes in the increase in incarceration and recommendations for addressing it (complete report here). For more than 100 of graphic representations of federal, state and historical prison populations, check out the Prison Policy Initiative report on tracking state prison growth. The site offers dozens of other reports as well.
For solitary confinement stats, a very extensive 155-page report from Yale Law School updates numbers for U.S. solitary confinement/isolation (which comes under several euphemistic names); it also includes findings related to demographics, living conditions, duration of time spent in isolation and how that time is spent. A separate Yale study focused on state and federal policies related to isolation, and a report from the Government Accountability Office makes recommendations for improvements to polices within the Bureau of Prisons. A 2014 American Journal of Public Health study investigates self-harm among inmates in isolation, and the ACLU has a special report on female inmates in solitary confinement.
Additional resources are available at the Journalist’s Resource here, here (solitary confinement) and here (father incarceration’s impact on children). Looking for ideas to localize? Check out Frontline’s “Locked Up in America” series.