Dying in prison is becoming more common for people without a death penalty or life sentence. Prison Journalism Project’s special project on aging in prison highlighted that fact earlier this year. And recent data have continued to underscore the growing trend.
According to the University of California, Los Angeles, Law Behind Bars Data Project, more than 6,000 incarcerated people died in prison in 2020, largely due to the outbreak of COVID-19. This amounts to a 46% increase in deaths from the previous year.
While the pandemic exposed shortcomings in prison health care, COVID-19 isn’t solely to blame. According to researchers, many prisons’ rough living conditions, lengthy sentences and inadequate oversight also play a role.
Watching friends and peers die, many incarcerated people have occasion to contemplate mortality, and write about it. Some contributors to PJP have described it as a kind of purgatory, others as “death by incarceration.”
To explore this urgent and unsettling reality, PJP has curated a selection of stories about all the ways of dying in prison.
“Life Without Parole Is America’s Hidden Death Penalty” by Brandon J. Baker: “No human should have to suffer what prison has to offer those of us with interminable sentences.”
“Drowning,” a poem by Larry N. Stromberg: “Trying to survive, hoping to stay alive. Dreaming for a second chance. Fighting for every breath.”
“Planning for Death” by Bob R. Williams Jr.: “The beauty I’ve discovered is that a death sentence, if one allows it, can force a body to come face-to-face with one’s own mortality, making the contemplation of death, the acceptance of death, a whole lot easier.”
“In the Depths of Death Row, a Light” by Chef C: “I find it somewhat ironic that a person can learn to live life in a place where they were sent to die.”
“Death Row Elegy” by Bob R. Williams Jr.: “They found their own meaning, their own purpose, right here in this dank and dark earthbound purgatory.”
“What a Dying Mouse Taught Me About the Death Penalty” by Jeffrey McKee: “I may be able to parole if I can convince the parole board that I am fit for release. Otherwise, I too will die in prison.”