Prisons’ Justice Day 50th Anniversary: database update 2025 – 86 deaths since January

This year, August 10, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of Prisoners’ Justice Day (PJD) in Canada—a day born from grief, resistance, and the demand for basic human rights behind bars. What started in 1975 as a memorial for Eddie Nalon – who died in solitary confinement at Millhaven Institution – has become an international day of remembrance and protest. But half a century later, the injustice that sparked it is far from history. We are able to show that deaths in custody continue to rise.

Since January 2025, we have tracked 86 people who have died in custody so far this year across Canada.

Download a list here of the 86 people who have died in custody so far this year (from January to July 2025). You can also view all of the names on our Memorial Page, or you can download your own list on our website’s Explore the Data page to create their own analysis.

Over the 25 years of data collected, there is an average of 87 deaths per year in the database. However, over the 10 year period from 2013 to 2022 – where we believe we have more robust data in the database – the average number of deaths in the database is 118 per year. If deaths continue at their current pace in 2025, we could see another deadly record for people in custody. Data for 2022 to 2025 is limited due to outstanding Access and to Information requests, and thus the data for this timeframe likely represents under-estimates.

In total, we have tracked 2,307 deaths in custody since the year 2000.

Since January 2025, we have collected a minimum of 44 deaths in federal custody. We have collected some provincial custody data, however, there are challenges around accessing information on recent deaths. We do know that in Ontario there have been 25 deaths in provincial custody. There were also 12 deaths in police custody, within custody of the RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police, Halifax Regional Police, and the Sûreté du Québec.

To gather information, this year we sent requests to all provinces and territories. We have not yet received replies from British Columbia, Alberta, Nunavut, North West Territories, Prince Edward Island, and Manitoba.

Often, for replies we did receive, we only get a number, with little other information. For example, in the provinces that responded to us, we often received replies that included a total number of deaths, with no other details, including no information on the institution where the death occurred. Much of this information will only come out once an investigation is conducted, or after an inquest is held, which can take many years. These investigations happen with little transparency nor public oversight.

This past year, in Ontario specifically, there were three super inquests and multiple individual inquests which examined the pattern of drug toxicity deaths at the provincial corrections institutions, including:  Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre, Niagara Detention Centre, and Maplehurst Correctional Complex. Together, these inquests reviewed over 25 deaths that occurred between 2017 to 2021, and examined the repeated failures in health care access, drug screening, emergency response inside provincial jails, staff shortages, and non compliance by correctional staff. The coroners’ juries issued hundreds of recommendations, many repeating recommendations and calls for change made by prisoners and advocates for decades, including better access to harm reduction, timely medical intervention, independent oversight, and accountability for correctional decision-making. These inquests did not just document individual tragedies—they outlined continuous systemic neglect driving the increase of deaths by incarceration.

This year, of those where the age is known, the average age of death of death is 57 years old, with the oldest person being 92 and the youngest person being 25 years old at the time of their death.

Since 2000, the overall average age of death of people in custody that we have tracked in our database is 44.5 years old.

While provincial officials provide little information when asked, federal government releases slightly more information, including information on the location of deaths, often the name of the deceased, and an initial understanding of cause of death. Furthermore, we also conduct searches for publicly available sources, government data portals, coroners’ websites, inquest documents, media articles, and department of justice reports. 

What is Tracking (In)Justice? 

Tracking (In)Justice is a law enforcement and criminal legal data and transparency project that tracks and analyses police-involved deaths and deaths in custody across Canada. We believe that accurate and verifiable data is one way to support communities advocating for justice, accountability, and transparency from state officials, and oversight bodies. Learn more about us here.

How can people use the database? 

People can search the database using the variables on our website 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.

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.