A study that covers just over 12 years of in-custody deaths at seven detention facilities in San Diego County was released this month and will be presented at next month’s Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board meeting.
CLERB contracted with The Mountain-Whisper-Light: Statistics & Data Science in 2023 to complete another independent study on fifteen interest areas, including in-custody deaths in San Diego County detention facilities for the last 10 years.
The study aims to identify risk and any relevant factors that might make some incarcerated people more vulnerable to in-custody death than others, officials said.
The report points out that in-custody deaths in San Diego County are heavily concentrated in two booking facilities: San Diego Central Jail and the Vista Detention Facility.
“SDCJ is a universe of its own,” the report added, observing that due to lack of compliance from the sheriff’s department caused them to invest a great deal of time for limited data for analysis. It recommends looking first at the Vista and downtown facilities, as that is where the death rates are highest.
“The problem of in-custody deaths in San Diego County is clearly a problem posed by two specific detention facilities: SDCJ and VDF, the facilities that process the intake of predominantly males Moreover, SDCJ stands out dramatically even between these two facilities, with a death rate nearly twice that of VDF,” the report said.
The report also noted that inmates with more visitors seemed to be less likely to die while incarcerated. The rest of the report can be found here.
The meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. on May 7 at the San Diego County Administration Center.
CLERB investigates citizen complaints against the sheriff’s office and the San Diego County probation department, as well as deaths and serious bodily injuries connected to the actions of either department.
More information on CLERB can be found here.
San Diego County has been under intense scrutiny for years over its unusually high number of in-custody deaths. In 2022, the California State Auditor found “deficiencies with how the sheriff’s department provides care for and protects incarcerated individuals (that) likely contributed to in-custody deaths.”
That audit examined 185 deaths within the San Diego County jail system from 2006 through 2020, a rate that exceeded all of California’s other large counties during that time period. The county had 19 custody deaths in 2022 alone, and another six in 2023.
The Sheriff’s Office has committed to a $500 million effort to modernize and upgrade its jails, but advocates have questioned whether those efforts are sufficient.
