State prisons in US grew deadlier and more violent amid guard shortage, review finds

WASHINGTON - State prisons in the US became more violent and nearly 50 per cent deadlier over the past five years, as the authorities struggled to keep enough guards on the job, according to a government-funded report to be released on Feb 4.

The US locks away more people than any other nation, including about one million people in state-run prisons.

The previously unreported evaluation, paid for by the US Department of Justice and conducted by an initiative called Safe Inside, found that those systems are under increasing strain, even as many states sharply reduced the number of people they locked up.

“We have less staff and they’re asked to do more,” said Mr John Wetzel, a former head of Pennsylvania’s prison system and chairman of Safe Inside, a nonpartisan research effort focused on improving state prisons. “We’re seeing the increased deaths, increase of assaults, and there’s no argument that these are going up.”

The staff shortages mean prisons have fewer people on duty to protect inmates, and fewer who can take them to medical appointments, Mr Wetzel said.

The rising death rate came as the number of assaults on inmates increased 54 per cent over the same period, and the number of assaults on prison staff rose 77 per cent, the review found. The report did not include details about the raw numbers of assaults.

The death rate among state prisoners increased 47 per cent between 2019 and 2024, the most recent years for which the organisation could gather data. The deaths include homicides, suicides and violence, and the report concluded that understaffing and high turnover “likely contribute” to the increase, though researchers said they lacked enough data to prove causation.

The review based that report on conditions in 12 state prison systems; most of the rest, it said, did not report adequate information on the number of people who died in their custody. It found that the death rate was 2.8 for every 100,000 prisoners in 2019; by 2024, it had risen to 4.1.

“There is not enough personnel to provide the attention that is needed to people in state custody,” said Ms Maria Goellner, vice-president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which advocates reducing the number of people in prison. “So you do see increased neglect, abuse and violence, and horrendous prison conditions.”

She added part of the problem is that states are imprisoning people “who don’t need to be there”.

The increase in deaths was particularly sharp in some states. In Alabama, researchers documented 337 inmates who died in 2024, compared with 99 in 2019.

In California, which operates one of the nation’s largest prison systems, deaths among inmates were largely unchanged, even though the state cut its prison population by nearly a quarter.

Spokesmen for the Alabama and California prisons did not respond to questions about the deaths.

The researchers chose those years so that they would not capture deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, which wreaked havoc in some jails and prisons and also pushed state and local governments to free thousands of people to slow the virus’ spread. 

Mr Michael Thompson, the director of Safe Inside, said the death rate has increased faster than could be explained by prisoners getting older or sicker.

Prisons throughout the US have struggled for years to hire enough guards and other staff, and to keep the ones they have. New York and Florida have sent thousands of National Guard soldiers to fill gaps in understaffed prisons.

The Safe Inside review found understaffing cost states more than US$2 billion (S$2.54 billion) in overtime in 2024, 80 per cent more than five years earlier.

Some prison workers told researchers that they worked multiple 18-hour shifts in a row, and that some facilities were so shorthanded that it was common for guards to be unable to take a bathroom break because there was no one to fill in for them while they were gone. That pressure, in turn, makes it harder to keep workers from quitting.

In Michigan, for example, the report found that one of every six prison jobs was unfilled in 2025. At some prisons, almost a third of jobs were vacant.

A spokeswoman for Michigan’s Department of Corrections, Ms Jenni Riehle, said the rate of unfilled jobs had fallen slightly since then. REUTERS