Autopsy Analysis of Deaths in LA County Jail, 2009-2018

This data was abstracted from autopsies of people who died while incarcerated in the Los Angeles County Jail system between the years of 2009 and 2018. We abstracted data from the 58 autopsies made available to us from the responsive documents for a public records request made to the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner (DME-C) in 2019 requesting autopsies for all deaths that occurred in LA County Jail custody between 2009 and 2019. We abstracted data across 84 different variables to allow for further analysis, leading to both better understanding of the circumstances of death in jail and the practices of the LA DME-C in investigating these deaths. Carefully selected language is used in the full autopsy analysis protocol with the intention of understanding the provenance of assertions of decedent health and mental health histories, as well as potential conflicts of interest, and failures to perform best practices of in-custody death investigations. In other words, the variables present information about the person prior to their death, the investigation right after the death, as well as the processes that occurred during the autopsy including subsequent tests conducted on the body.