Last year, 2023, on August 10th for Prisoners’ Justice Day, the Tracking (In)Justice project launched the first comprehensive online memorial of people who have died in custody across Canada. The memorial is one step to address a context where deaths in custody are not acknowledged, tracked or documented in a consistent way across Canada, leaving little information available to the public.

This year, 2024, our team is working to further address this gap in understanding, as we launch the first online, publicly available database of deaths in custody across Canada since the year 2000. We hope this new database enables communities, academics, journalists, advocates, and criminal justice workers to access information on deaths in custody in ways previously not possible, so we are collectively able to understand systemic issues and patterns, to help support calls for change, transparency and accountability. To watch our launch event hosted on August 9, 2024, click here.

As of Prisoners’ Justice Day, 2024, the database currently includes 2,131 deaths in custody across Canada since the year 2000. Due to limited access to information, this is a bare minimum of the total number of deaths in custody over the past 24 years. As this is a living database, our team will update the data on an ongoing basis when more information about deaths becomes available. This is an initial analysis, which will be further developed over the coming months.

 

Interpreting these findings 

Until more analysis can be conducted, we urge caution in interpreting the database findings as a real world understanding of deaths in custody across Canada. But as this is the largest dataset on deaths in custody ever created in Canada, and our data sources are mostly directly from government sources, we believe the data can give us a strong indication of potential trends which warrant further investigation.

 

Deaths in custody may be on the rise 

Over the 24 years of data collected, there is an average of 87 deaths per year in the database. However, over the ten year period from 2013 to 2023 – where we believe we have more robust data in the database – the average number of deaths in the database is 118 per year. According to the data we currently have access to, there were 129 deaths in 2018, 134 deaths in 2019, 165 deaths in 2020, and 169 deaths in 2021, which is the highest number of deaths per year we have documented thus far. This could indicate that overall deaths in custody are on the rise.

Factors impacting this potential rise are a challenge to disentangle with the limited information available, but could include COVID-19, along with increased use of remand, and higher incarceration rates.

Due to lack of access to information, the number of deaths prior to 2010 currently in the database is limited. Government data portals are inconsistent, with some including information only as far back as 2007 or 2005. Depending on the jurisdiction, for deaths that occurred prior to 2010, we have found that record keeping is lacking, making access to information requests challenging, or with limited detail. However, we recently received an access to information request from Correctional Service Canada, which may fill some gaps, and our team will be adding the details to the database over the next few months.

Additionally, data for 2022 to 2024 is also not consistent, and is limited in detail, due to inability to access information because of ongoing internal investigations, and the backlog of deaths for coroners inquest to be completed. It can take years after the death before the results are made available to the public, and provincial and territorial and federal government agencies are not continually tracking deaths in custody. This means there are more deaths that we have not yet collected.

 

Age

The average age of death for those in the database is 44.2 years old. By comparison, according to Statistics Canada, life expectancy as of 2022 in Canada was 81 years old.

The youngest person in the database was 14 years old at the time of death. The oldest person in the database was 90 years old at the time of death. Both people died in custody due to suicide.

There are 10 deceased people under the age of 18 years old in the database. We do not release the names of these individuals who are 18 years of age and under.

Furthermore, there are 608 deceased people in the database with an unknown age. Often the age of the deceased is not released to the public because of privacy legislation.

The average age of death being 44.2 years old indicates that conditions of confinement can lead to untimely death, which may cut some incarcerated people’s life expectancy in almost half.

 

Gender 

Accurate information on incarcerated people’s gender identity is hard to come by. Our project does not assign gender based on the type of institution someone is incarcerated within, meaning if someone dies in an institution designated for women, we do not automatically assume that person identified as a woman. We will indicate gender as “known” based on the use of pronouns in coroner documents, other official documents, or credible sources related to a death. As was the case this year, if one credible source notes the individual’s self-identified gender, our team will default to that source, despite what other institutional sources may state.

There are 1479 deceased people who were identified as men in official documents we examined, which account for 69.4% of deaths in the database, and there was one 1 two spirited person. There are 129 people who identified as women in official documents, which account for 6% of deaths in the database. In 522, or 24.5% of cases, gender is unknown, as there is often not enough information to make a determination. There are 2 trans identified people in the database, one trans man and one trans woman, who have been included in the gender category with which they identified.

For comparison, from 2022 to 2023, the total provincial and territorial custody admissions across Canada were 163, 387 people, with men making up 86% and women 14%. In federal custody, women make up about 7% and men account for 93% of adult admissions.

 

Racialization

Most of the data on racialization is unknown. Of people who died in custody in the database, the identified race for 84% of deceased persons is unknown. The many unknowns are due to a lack of demographic information being recorded or released to the public about people’s racial identity and backgrounds. For those deaths we have information on, 6.8% were identified as white, 7.8% were identified as Indigenous, and 1.3% were identified as Black.

Our team does not assign an assumed race based on photographs, and only assigns an identified race based on references in official and credible documents. If references to culturally relevant recommendations are made during an inquest we will identify that deceased person as from that racialized community. For example, if inquest recommendations make reference to Indigenous specific support to prevent future deaths, or if the deceased is represented by an Indigenous organization during inquest we will identify the deceased as Indigenous.

As a comparison, in federal prisons in Canada, self-reported statistics in fiscal year 2021 to 2022 show that white people make up 51.8%, Indigenous peoples make up 28.1%, and Black people make up 8.1% of the prisoner population. In comparison to the general population, both racialized and Indigenous peoples are disproportionately incarcerated.

 

How can people use the database? 

People can search the database using the variables on our website’s Explore the Data page to create their own analysis. For example, to get a snapshot of how many people have died in each institution, you can search the deaths by institution in which they occurred. Or, to understand patterns over time, you can search by date, and manner of death, or other factors such as gender, or type of custody. Custom searches are available for download via the excel or csv file button function on the Explore the Data page.

 

To learn more about our methods and to explore the data, look here.

To learn about where the data comes from, look here.

To see some of our analysis on the data, look here.

To learn more about our project, look here.