Sandra Bland Died One Year Ago Today
“We found evidence of 811 fatalities—an average of more than two per day. (By way of comparison, 178 unarmed people were killed by police during the same period, according to The Guardian.) And like so much else in this realm, the burden is not borne equally. Black people are more likely to die in jail because they are more likely to be arrested than any other racial group, for reasons that have as much to do with double standards in the justice system and historic oppression as they do with crime. African-Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population and, on average, 32 percent of people who died in jail between 2000 and 2013, according to federal data.
“In a significant number of the cases we found, people killed themselves within just a few days, even when they had been arrested on minor charges that were extremely unlikely to result in prison time. Nearly one-third of the deaths we found were suicides. And at least one-third of people died within three days of being booked. […]
“We learned a great deal about the inner workings of a world that is almost entirely hidden from the public. We learned why some people become frighteningly vulnerable to harming themselves within a frighteningly short period of time. And we also learned that it doesn’t have to be this way.”
An essential addition to your #longreads for the week.
And since then, at least 810 people have lost their lives in jail.
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