{
 "meta": {
  "dataset": "Suicides in Georgia State Prisons — Source-Verified Claim Series",
  "publisher": "Georgia Prisoners' Speak (The GDC Accountability Project, Inc.)",
  "generated": "2026-08-31",
  "license": "Public records analysis; free to use for journalistic, research, and policy purposes with attribution to Georgia Prisoners' Speak (gps.press).",
  "contact": "https://gps.press/contact/",
  "methodology": "Each record is one factual claim with the verbatim quote that supports it, the published source (Bureau of Justice Statistics or the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project), a retrievable source URL, and the result of a quote re-fetch check (quote_check) and, where applicable, an arithmetic re-check (arith_check). UCLA's Georgia counts were cross-validated against BJS's independently collected 2015-2019 figures (74 = 74) before relying on UCLA's 2020-2021 values, which the federal government never collected.",
  "coverage_note": "FLOOR SEMANTICS: no complete count of Georgia prison suicides exists after 2021. The federal mortality collection closed in March 2021, its successor does not publish state figures, and Georgia stopped carrying cause of death in its public records in March 2024. GPS's own registry documents individual suicides from medical-examiner, coroner, and witness sources; those GPS counts are floors, never totals, and are deliberately excluded from this series because they do not carry a trend.",
  "data_dictionary": {
   "id": "claim id",
   "claim": "the factual claim, in words",
   "quote": "verbatim quote from the published source",
   "source": "the published source (report, table)",
   "source_url": "retrievable URL for the source",
   "artifact": "GPS's archived copy (file:line) of the source text",
   "retrieved": "date GPS retrieved the source",
   "quote_check": "PASS = the quote was re-fetched and matched verbatim",
   "arith_check": "arithmetic re-check result, where the claim involves sums"
  },
  "warnings": [
   "Only claims with quote_check=PASS are citable.",
   "Series values describe Georgia STATE PRISONS unless a claim says otherwise; Georgia county JAIL figures appear as explicit comparators."
  ]
 },
 "claims": [
  {
   "id": "C1",
   "claim": "Georgia state prison suicides by period, 2001-19: 22 / 30 / 19 / 74, total 145",
   "quote": "  Georgia                       22              30            19             74            145",
   "source": "BJS, Suicide in Local Jails and State and Federal Prisons, 2000-2019 - Statistical Tables, October 2021, TABLE 10 (Aggregated number of suicides in state and federal prisons, by state and region, 2001-19)",
   "source_url": "https://bjs.ojp.gov/media/65216/download",
   "artifact": "artifacts/bjs_suicide_2000_2019.txt:1005",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "arith_check": "PASS (22+30+19+74=145 = published total)"
  },
  {
   "id": "C2",
   "claim": "Georgia state prison suicide RATE per 100,000, 2001-19: 11 / 11 / 8 / 31, period average 15",
   "quote": "   Georgia                       11              11              8            31             15",
   "source": "BJS, Suicide in Local Jails and State and Federal Prisons, 2000-2019 - Statistical Tables, October 2021, TABLE 11 (Average rate of suicides per 100,000 prisoners in state and federal prisons, by state and region, 2001-19)",
   "source_url": "https://bjs.ojp.gov/media/65216/download",
   "artifact": "artifacts/bjs_suicide_2000_2019.txt:1088",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "Comparators same table/period 2015-19: U.S. total 21, State total 22, South 24. Georgia (31) exceeds all three."
  },
  {
   "id": "C3",
   "claim": "BJS names Georgia as one of only three states where prison suicides tripled between 2010-14 and 2015-19",
   "quote": "Te number of prisoners who died by suicide between 2010-14 and 2015-19 tripled in three states (Arkansas, Georgia, and West Virginia) and more than doubled in fve states (Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee).",
   "source": "BJS, Suicide in Local Jails and State and Federal Prisons, 2000-2019 - Statistical Tables, October 2021, Highlights",
   "source_url": "https://bjs.ojp.gov/media/65216/download",
   "artifact": "artifacts/bjs_suicide_2000_2019.txt:268-273",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "'Te'/'fve' are ligature-drop artifacts of pdftotext, not typos in the source. Georgia's own multiple is 3.89x (74/19)."
  },
  {
   "id": "C4",
   "claim": "BJS formally closed the MCI collection on 2021-03-31; 2019 is the last data year",
   "quote": "BJS finished collection of deaths that occurred during the 2019 calendar year in December, 2020, and formally closed the MCI collection on March 31, 2021.",
   "source": "BJS, Mortality in Correctional Institutions (MCI) data-collection page",
   "source_url": "https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/mortality-correctional-institutions-mci-formerly-deaths-custody-reporting-program",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS (fetched page, quoted verbatim)",
   "verification": "primary source - BJS's own site"
  },
  {
   "id": "C5",
   "claim": "DCRA data stewardship moved to BJA, which does not publish the data",
   "quote": "DOJ determined the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) will take over stewardship of data on mortality in prisons and jails through DCRA from 2019 onwards, but it will not publish any of the data, or even report them in the aggregate.",
   "source": "UCLA Law COVID Behind Bars Data Project, 'Introducing the Carceral Mortality Database'",
   "source_url": "https://uclacovidbehindbars.org/intro-carceral-mortality/",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "verification": "SECONDARY - corroborated in part by BJS's own page (C4), which confirms the BJA transfer decision but does not itself state that BJA will not publish. The 'will not publish' half rests on UCLA. UPGRADE BEFORE PUBLICATION: find a DOJ/BJA primary source or the DOJ OIG DCRA compliance report."
  },
  {
   "id": "C6",
   "claim": "GPS mortality registry: 1,859 deaths 2020-01-02 to 2026-07-20; 67 recorded suicides; 1,042 still uncaused (56%)",
   "quote": "SELECT: total=1859, suicide(cause_category=2)=67, unknown_pending(cause_category=6)=1042",
   "source": "GPS internal - wp_gps_mortality_deaths, investigation_only=0",
   "artifact": "internal query, this run",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "arith_check": "PASS (per-year uncaused sums to 1042; per-year suicide sums to 67)",
   "note": "Reconciles with the canonical figures cited to Darshall in the 11:43 reply."
  },
  {
   "id": "C7",
   "claim": "Zero of the 67 recorded suicides came from GDC as the cause source",
   "quote": "cause_source distribution for cause_category=2: {7 Medical Examiner: 61, 2 Prisoner Report: 5, 9 County Coroner: 1}; cause_source=1 'Official (GDC)' absent",
   "source": "GPS internal - wp_gps_mortality_deaths",
   "artifact": "internal query, this run",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "Every suicide GPS can name was learned from a medical examiner, a coroner, or a person inside - none from the state."
  },
  {
   "id": "C8",
   "claim": "GPS's raw yearly suicide counts CANNOT be read as a trend - they track documentation coverage, not incidence",
   "quote": "cause-coverage by year: 2020 33.3%, 2021 43.6%, 2022 48.0%, 2023 49.2%, 2024 39.3%, 2025 51.8%, 2026 43.7%. Suicide as share of CAUSED deaths: 4.1 / 10.7 / 9.8 / 7.8 / 8.4 / 8.3 / 7.2 percent.",
   "source": "GPS internal - derived, this run",
   "artifact": "internal query, this run",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "NEGATIVE FINDING, and the most important one for the volunteer. Raw counts rise 4->13 (2020->2025) and look like a surge; as a share of caused deaths the series is flat at ~8% after 2020. The apparent rise is our own improving coverage. Do not let anyone cite the raw series as a trend."
  },
  {
   "id": "C9",
   "claim": "No comparable national series exists before 2001, so the 30-year ask cannot be met",
   "quote": "Annual collection of individual death records from state prison facilities began in 2001.",
   "source": "BJS MCI data-collection page",
   "source_url": "https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/mortality-correctional-institutions-mci-formerly-deaths-custody-reporting-program",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "Jails from 2000, state prisons from 2001. Max defensible span is 2001-2019 federal + 2020-2026 GPS, with a documented seam - 25 years, not 30."
  },
  {
   "id": "C10",
   "claim": "Annual Georgia state-prison suicide series 2015-2021: 7, 7, 19, 17, 24, 29, 23",
   "quote": "Circumstance.General=='Suicide' grouped by Year over 2,169 Georgia records: 2015:7 2016:7 2017:19 2018:17 2019:24 2020:29 2021:23",
   "source": "UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project, custodial_mortality_project, Data/Raw/Deaths/Individual/GA-Individual.csv",
   "source_url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/uclalawcovid19behindbars/custodial_mortality_project/main/Data/Raw/Deaths/Individual/GA-Individual.csv",
   "artifact": "artifacts/ucla_GA-Individual.csv",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "cross_check": "PASS - UCLA 2015-19 sums to 74, EXACTLY matching BJS Table 10's independent 2015-19 figure of 74. Two independent collections agree to the unit."
  },
  {
   "id": "C11",
   "claim": "UCLA carries NO cause of death for Georgia from 2022 onward - 255/255, 262/262, 333/333 blank",
   "quote": "blank-or-unknown Circumstance.General by year: 2022 255 of 255, 2023 262 of 262, 2024 333 of 333",
   "source": "UCLA custodial_mortality_project, GA-Individual.csv",
   "artifact": "artifacts/ucla_GA-Individual.csv",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "DISCREPANCY - GPS's canonical claim is that Georgia stopped publishing cause of death in MARCH 2024, but the cause field goes blank from 2022. Either UCLA's acquisition changed or our March-2024 date is wrong. MUST be resolved before either date is published. See L2."
  },
  {
   "id": "C12",
   "claim": "Georgia's LOCAL JAIL suicide rate stayed flat while its STATE PRISON rate quadrupled over the same years",
   "quote": "Table 2 (jail counts) Georgia: 75,68,66,73 = 282. Table 3 (jail rate/100k) Georgia: 40,30,31,36, avg 34. Versus Table 10/11 prisons: 22,30,19,74 and 11,11,8,31.",
   "source": "BJS, Suicide in Local Jails and State and Federal Prisons, 2000-2019, Tables 2, 3, 10, 11 (machine-readable CSVs)",
   "source_url": "https://bjs.ojp.gov/media/65206/download",
   "artifact": "artifacts/tables/sljsfp0019stt02.csv, stt03.csv, stt10.csv, stt11.csv",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "NATURAL CONTROL. Same state, same years, same reporting regime. Georgia's jails were flat and BELOW the national jail rate throughout. Rules out 'suicide rose everywhere' / 'reporting improved' / 'Georgians got more suicidal'. Whatever changed, changed inside GDC."
  },
  {
   "id": "C13",
   "claim": "BJA has never published DCRA data and has no plans to - authoritative citation, supersedes C5",
   "quote": "BJA has not made any of the data it has collected through the DCRA program publicly available.",
   "quote2": "DOJ officials informed it that DCRA 2013 does not require DOJ to publish data the department collects from states and there are no plans to do so.",
   "source": "Congressional Research Service, R47559, 'Death in Custody Reporting Act: Background and Legislative Considerations', 2023-05-17",
   "source_url": "https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R47559.html",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "verification": "UPGRADED from secondary (UCLA) to CRS citing DOJ officials directly. C5 gap CLOSED."
  },
  {
   "id": "C14",
   "claim": "Even the data BJA does collect is materially incomplete",
   "quote": "BJS found that during the last three months of 2019, state prisons and local jails reported 1,264 in-custody deaths to BJS and 744 in-custody deaths to BJA, meaning that about 40% of the deaths reported to BJS were not reported to BJA.",
   "source": "CRS R47559, 2023-05-17",
   "source_url": "https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R47559.html",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "GAO separately identified nearly 1,000 in-custody deaths in FY2021 that states did not report under DCRA."
  },
  {
   "id": "C15",
   "claim": "UCLA's independent all-cause Georgia death counts closely match the GPS registry, validating both",
   "quote": "UCLA vs GPS by year - 2020: 281 vs 294 | 2021: 247 vs 257 | 2022: 255 vs 254 | 2023: 262 vs 262 | 2024: 333 vs 333",
   "source": "UCLA prison_agency_counts_2019-2024.csv vs GPS wp_gps_mortality_deaths",
   "artifact": "artifacts/ucla_prison_agency_counts_2019-2024.csv",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "2023 and 2024 are EXACT matches; 2022 differs by 1. Independent external validation of the GPS mortality registry's completeness on all-cause counts. UCLA also records Georgia deaths up 108% from 2019 to 2024."
  },
  {
   "id": "C16",
   "claim": "GPS's registry captures only a small fraction of known suicides in the years both sources cover",
   "quote": "2020: UCLA 29 vs GPS 4 (14%). 2021: UCLA 23 vs GPS 12 (52%).",
   "source": "derived, this run",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "Confirms C8 - GPS's 67 is a severe floor. For 2020 we hold 4 of at least 29."
  },
  {
   "id": "C17",
   "claim": "Tyler Ryals's perception that suicides doubled in his last years is corroborated and is if anything conservative",
   "quote": "Ryals, GDC officer/CERT Commander 2014-2024 (payroll-verified, person 660, source #163, case 168), states suicides doubled over his last few years of employment. Measured series over his tenure: 7 (2015) -> 24 (2019) -> 29 (2020) = 3.4x to 4.1x.",
   "source": "GPS whistleblower registry + UCLA annual series [C10]",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS on the data half",
   "note": "His statement is a PERCEPTION and must always be labelled as such - but it is now independently corroborated by two datasets, and understates the measured rise. FOLLOW-UP: ask Ryals to pin the specific years he means; his 2014-2024 tenure spans BOTH the documented rise AND the post-2021 blackout."
  },
  {
   "id": "C18",
   "claim": "The per-100,000 rates in this research are BJS's own, computed on the December 31 CUSTODY population — not on GDC's published population figures and not computed by GPS",
   "quote": "Note: Rates are based on the annual number of suicides and the December 31 custody population in state prisons.",
   "source": "BJS, Suicide in Local Jails and State and Federal Prisons, 2000-2019, Table 11 note",
   "artifact": "artifacts/bjs_suicide_2000_2019.txt:1190",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "MATERIAL CAVEAT raised by BT. Denominator is a year-end CUSTODY snapshot sourced from BJS's National Prisoner Statistics program, NOT an average daily population and NOT GDC's own published figure. Given the known GPS population-scope trap (50,082 facilities vs 52,957 total in custody), recomputing these rates against our canonical population WILL produce different numbers for definitional reasons alone. Never present these rates as GPS-computed, and never mix denominators across sources."
  },
  {
   "id": "C19",
   "claim": "GDC's own Annual Fiscal Reports publish NO death or suicide counts in any year checked",
   "quote": "FY2019, FY2021, FY2023, FY2025 full-text: every occurrence of 'suicide' concerns prevention programming (Suicide Awareness campaign, staff training, Suicide & Crisis Lifeline cards). Zero death or suicide COUNTS. FY2021 contains the word zero times.",
   "source": "GDC Annual Fiscal Reports FY2019/FY2021/FY2023/FY2025",
   "source_url": "https://gdc.georgia.gov/document/gdc-annual-fiscal-report/gdc-annual-fiscal-report-2019/download",
   "artifact": "artifacts/gdc-reports/gdc_fy{2019,2021,2023,2025}.txt",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "CITABLE NEGATIVE. GDC does not publish these numbers in its own annual report - not now, and not in 2019 when it was still producing cause-of-death data under open records request. Stronger than 'we could not find it'."
  },
  {
   "id": "C20",
   "claim": "GDC maintains a facility-level internal dashboard that tracks SUICIDES as a KPI with trend data",
   "quote": "THE WARDENS' DASHBOARD ... It also includes trends for KPI numbers and alerts specified by the wardens, such as suicides, grievances, disciplinary reports written, contraband, incidents and protective custody trends.",
   "source": "GDC Annual Fiscal Report FY2019",
   "source_url": "https://gdc.georgia.gov/document/gdc-annual-fiscal-report/gdc-annual-fiscal-report-2019/download",
   "artifact": "artifacts/gdc-reports/gdc_fy2019.txt:1264-1269",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "MAJOR ORR LEAD. GDC tracks suicides internally at facility level, with trends, throughout the period in which it publishes nothing. Named in GDC's OWN published report, which makes a 'no such record' refusal very difficult. Other named systems in the same reports: SCRIBE (offender management) and SMART Custody. None has ever been a GPS ORR target."
  },
  {
   "id": "C21",
   "claim": "UCLA's Georgia cause-of-death data is GDC's OWN data, produced by GDC under an open records request",
   "quote": "The UCLA Law COVID Behind Bars Data Project obtained data on deaths in Georgia state prisons from 2015 to 2020 through a request for public records to the Georgia Department of Corrections.",
   "source": "UCLA Law COVID Behind Bars Data Project, 'Georgia Custodial Death Records Summary Report', 2022-10-31",
   "source_url": "https://uclacovidbehindbars.org/assets/10.31.22_ga_report_updated.pdf",
   "artifact": "artifacts/ucla_ga_report.txt:20-24",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "HIGHEST-VALUE FINDING OF THE RUN. The annual suicide series is not a third-party estimate - it is GDC's own record, released on request. GDC has a documented precedent of producing exactly this dataset. That is strong leverage for a GPS ORR covering 2021 onward, and it would close our blackout. Nobody at GPS had asked."
  },
  {
   "id": "C22",
   "claim": "UCLA's published table independently confirms the annual suicide series computed from their raw records",
   "quote": "Suicide    7    7    19    17    24    29    314.29    20.83",
   "source": "UCLA Georgia Custodial Death Records Summary Report, Table (2015-2020)",
   "artifact": "artifacts/ucla_ga_report.txt:721",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "Third confirmation of the series: (1) computed from UCLA's raw GA-Individual.csv, (2) UCLA's own published table, (3) BJS's independent 2015-19 total of 74. All agree."
  },
  {
   "id": "C23",
   "claim": "Facility-level Georgia prison suicide counts 2015-2020 are available",
   "quote": "GEORGIA STATE PRISON Suicide 4 2 2 3 2 8 | VALDOSTA STATE PRISON Suicide 0 1 4 4 3 4 | JOHNSON STATE PRISON Suicide 0 0 0 0 1 3 | GA DIAG AND CLASS PRISON Suicide 0 0 3 0 4 2",
   "source": "UCLA Georgia Custodial Death Records Summary Report, Table 8 (Annual Totals of Homicides and Suicides by Facility, 2015-2020)",
   "artifact": "artifacts/ucla_ga_report.txt:827-895",
   "retrieved": "2026-08-03",
   "quote_check": "PASS",
   "note": "Georgia State Prison had 8 suicides in 2020, more than any of the five prior years. Facility-level detail GPS did not hold - directly useful for district-level advocacy and for facility intelligence pages."
  }
 ]
}