28 People Have Died in New York City Jails Since the Start of Last…
www.vera.org
In the early hours of October 5, Manish Kunwar, 27, died on Rikers Island. He is the ninth person to die during their incarceration in or immediately following their release from New York City’s dangerous jails this year, and the 28th since Mayor Eric Adams assumed office last January. Kunwar died…

Every time an inmate dies of anything but old age, guards and wardens have failed at their job. They should be suspended and investigated, then fired and prosecuted if inattention or dereliction is proven.

Every damned time.

  • Gigan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    1 year ago

    28 people in two years doesn’t really sound like a lot. Is that higher per capita than the regular population?

    • PunnyName@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      1 year ago

      Depends on how and what they die from. It’s a controlled environment with (what should be) heavily monitoring by personnel (that’s what they’re paid to do).

      Problem is, jail / prison guards don’t give a shit about inmates. Even if you’re in pre-trial jail (a massive overpopulation), they’ll barely give you the fucking time. And asking for necessities is a chore itself.

      So if they actually gave a shit, few to no inmates would ever die in holding.

    • Doug Holland@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      That’s a pretty good question.

      On this page, the city says it held 6,138 inmates on 9/1/2023, and as of August the average stay was 92 days. Wikipedia says the city’s estimated population was 8,467,513, as of July 2021.

      Someone’s gotta be smart enough to calculate an approximate answer from those numbers, but I slept through the kind of math it would take. Anyone?

      • Gigan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Uhhh, I’ll try. This site lists the New York death rate at 0.0060 (0.6%)

        28/6138 = 0.0046 (0.46%) So it’s about the same? Not sure how to include the average length of stay in the calculation.

        • Doug Holland@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          22·
          1 year ago

          It’s math, so I’m out of the running. I think we need to factor in length of stay, but might be wrong. I suppose the average inmate is younger than the average New Yorker, too.

          Does Lemmy have an ask-a-mathematician subLemmy?

          • Bgugi@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            You do not need to include the length of stay. You will need to divide the interval (22 months/1 year)… 0.46%/(22/12)=0.25% per year.

            From there, it would make sense to control for age. To do that, youd want to integrate an actuarial table based on age demographics for both populations. It would also make sense to control (if data is available) death rates mortality rates for a similar at-risk population… you could go on and on.

            Ultimately, statistics can be tortured into telling you whatever you want to hear.