Making prisoner deaths visible: Towards a new epistemological approach

Tomczak, Philippa; Mulgrew, Róisín

Abstract

In custodial contexts, the duty of states to protect the most fundamental right-to life-is heightened. Nevertheless, prisoner deaths are a universal and frequent concern. The mortality rate among the 11.5 million prisoners globally is up to 50% higher than amongst non-imprisoned persons , forming a human rights and health equity concern. It is therefore peculiar that prisoner deaths have attracted only piecemeal scholarly attention. In this article, we problematize epistem-ologies of prisoner death, highlighting obfuscations and agglomerations in existing datasets based on poor definitions, reductive statistics and constrained medico-legal categorizations. We provide a springboard towards a new epistemological approach that makes the scale and breadth of prisoner deaths and deceased prisoner characteristics more visible to facilitate prevention. We advance three tenets: count prisoners who die rather than deaths in prison, disaggregate prisoner death data through rights-informed dimensions and adopt explicitly defined, mutually exclusive categorizations.

Citation

Tomczak, P., & Mulgrew, R. (2023). Making prisoner deaths visible: Towards a new epistemological approach. Incarceration, 4, https://doi.org/10.1177/26326663231160344

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 3, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Mar 6, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023-01
• Deposit Date: Mar 7, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 8, 2023
• Journal: Incarceration
• Print ISSN: 2632-6663
• Electronic ISSN: 2632-6663
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 4
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/26326663231160344
• Keywords: Detention; suicide; manner of death; cause of death; mortality; homicide; data
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/18228011
• Publisher URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/26326663231160344