Drug overdose deaths in California state prisons rebounded to near record levels last year even as corrections officials touted the state’s intervention methods as a model for prisons and jails across the United States.
At least 59 prisoners died of overdoses last year, according to a KFF Health News analysis of deaths in custody data the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is required to report under a new state law. That’s more than double the number who died of overdoses in each of 2020 (23) and 2021 (24).
Prison officials would not provide the number of overdose deaths in 2022, saying they are still being analyzed for a report to be released later this year. But attorneys representing prisoners said they believe there were substantially more fatal overdoses in 2022 than in the previous two years.
The new numbers are a big setback for state officials, who poured resources into overdose prevention efforts after a record 64 overdose deaths in 2019 gave California prisons the highest drug overdose death rate of any state correctional system in the United States.
With nearly 94,000 state prisoners, California is one of the nation’s largest providers of medication-assisted drug treatment. The prisoners’ attorneys still support California’s pioneering program, saying there would be even more deaths without it.
“Fentanyl. That’s I think probably the main cause from what I hear,” said Don Specter, a lead attorney in the major class-action lawsuit over poor medical care of California prisoners, referring to the synthetic opioid at the heart of the nation’s overdose crisis. “Nothing else has really changed too much. It’s very pervasive.”
With a lower prison population than in previous years, California’s 2023 numbers…
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