When someone you love died in a California state prison

If your son, husband, father or brother died in a California state prison, we are so sorry. Families often learn of the death in a short phone call and then hear little else. If you are looking for a lawyer because someone died in a California state prison, this guide is meant to help you understand what happened, what the state's own records say, and whether a CDCR wrongful death claim may be possible.

We explain the statewide death figures, the medical system that runs prison health care, the most common failures, who can be held responsible, and the deadlines. This is general information, not legal advice about your case. For that, you can ask for a free, confidential review.

What the records show about deaths in California state prisons

System	California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) state prisons
Operated by	CDCR. Medical care is provided by California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS), under the federal Plata receivership.
Population	89,235 people in state prisons (CDCR weekly population report, Aug. 20, 2025)
Deaths in custody	2022: 389 · 2023: 383 · 2024: 409 · 2025: not yet published as of October 2026 (CCHCS mortality reviews)
Overdose deaths	2022: 53 · 2023: 89 · 2024: 78 (CCHCS)
Oversight	Plata v. Newsom (medical care), Coleman (mental health care), CCHCS death reviews and public death reporting

According to the state prison health system's 2024 mortality review, 409 people died in CDCR custody in 2024, a rate of 443 per 100,000. That was up from 389 deaths in 2022 and 383 in 2023. The same review counted 36 homicides in 2024, compared with 25 in 2022 and 22 in 2023. That review, released in December 2025, is the latest one on the CCHCS reports page; a 2025 review had not been posted as of October 2026.

Overdose deaths rose sharply, from 53 in 2022 to 89 in 2023, then fell to 78 in 2024. In 2024, two prisons that the report does not name accounted for a third of all overdose deaths. KFF Health News reported that R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego averaged 35 overdoses a month, fatal and nonfatal, from October 2022 to March 2023.

Suicides have run at roughly 20 to 30 a year. CCHCS counts 21 in 2022, 30 in 2023 and 29 in 2024; CDCR's separate suicide report gives 20 for 2022. That report found that 63% of the people who died by suicide in 2023 were in the prison mental health program, and 20% were in restricted housing.

Which California prisons have the most deaths?

CCHCS posts each death on a rolling public table under AB 2761, but it does not publish official totals by prison. What the table shows is a pattern. The state's medical prisons, the California Medical Facility in Vacaville and the California Health Care Facility in Stockton, account for many deaths because they house hospice and long-term care patients. Many of those deaths are recorded as natural or expected. That does not end the question for a family, because the state's own reviews find delayed care in some of these cases.

Higher-security prisons also appear again and again in the state's death data, including Kern Valley State Prison, California State Prison–Los Angeles County in Lancaster, R.J. Donovan, Salinas Valley and California State Prison–Sacramento. At these prisons, violence and overdoses drive more of the deaths. CDCR announced several homicide investigations at Lancaster and Kern Valley in 2025. In CDCR's 2023 suicide report, Wasco State Prison and Mule Creek State Prison had the most suicides.

Crowding is part of the picture. In August 2025, several prisons held far more people than they were designed for, including Wasco at 159.8% and the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility in Corcoran at 156.8%, according to CDCR's weekly population report.

What usually goes wrong: the state's own findings

Each year, CCHCS reviews prison deaths for "opportunities for improvement." For 2024, it identified 548 of them across 409 deaths. They included:

• 76 cases where red-flag symptoms were not worked up, or were worked up late
• 34 abnormal lab or imaging results that were not acted on, including six positive drug screens in patients who later died of overdose
• 34 delays in calling 911 or in emergency response
• 15 patients not referred to addiction treatment, nine of whom died of overdose

The review sent 59 deaths to the system's Health Care Incident Review Committee. These are the state's own findings, and they are often the starting point for a family's questions. Our guide to fentanyl and overdose deaths in custody explains when an overdose becomes the institution's legal responsibility.

Prison medical care and the Plata receivership

Prison health care in California has been under federal court supervision for two decades. The Prison Law Office filed Plata v. Newsom in 2001. In 2005 the court placed prison medical care under a receivership, and the Receiver was appointed in February 2006. In 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a cap on the prison population at 137.5% of design capacity.

The Receiver has been returning control to CDCR prison by prison. As of the Receiver's June 2026 report, medical care at 31 institutions had been delegated back to CDCR, including the Stockton medical prison in March 2026, and three remained under the Receiver. The Receiver reports that patients access medication for addiction treatment at more than twice the community rate. Mental health care is overseen separately in the Coleman class action.

Who can be held responsible for a death in a California prison?

• Individual officers, doctors and nurses. Under federal civil-rights law (42 U.S.C. § 1983), prison staff can be sued personally if they were deliberately indifferent to a serious medical need or a substantial risk of harm, in violation of the Eighth Amendment. This means the person knew of the risk and disregarded it. It is a harder standard than ordinary carelessness.
• The State of California and CDCR, on state-law claims such as wrongful death and negligence. California law gives public entities broad immunity for injuries to prisoners, with important exceptions, including when an employee knows a person needs immediate medical care and fails to summon it (Government Code §§ 844.6 and 845.6). Employees remain liable, and the State generally indemnifies them.
• Not the State itself under § 1983. The State and CDCR are not "persons" who can be sued under that federal law, which is why federal claims name individual staff.

What families have done in court

Jacqueline Hampton's husband died of COVID-19 in September 2020 after the May 2020 transfer of prisoners from the California Institution for Men to San Quentin. She and Michael Hampton sued the State and officials, alleging Eighth Amendment deliberate indifference. In 2023, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the officials were not entitled to qualified immunity on that claim at that stage, and the Supreme Court declined review in 2024. The case was later consolidated with 64 other San Quentin transfer cases, according to the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. As of the Clearinghouse's June 2026 update, the case was still ongoing and no settlement had been reported.

In 2025, the families of Tania Thomas and Stephanie Dowells, two women killed during family visits at Mule Creek State Prison, sued CDCR for wrongful death, alleging failures to screen and supervise the visits, CBS Sacramento reported. These are allegations, and the cases had not been resolved in the sources we reviewed.

Recent settlements and verdicts

We have not yet verified a reported settlement or verdict from 2022 to 2026 in a wrongful death case over the death of a person held in a California state prison, so we do not list amounts here. Some cases, like the San Quentin transfer cases above, are still in court. Every case is different, and past results do not predict the outcome of any other case. Our jail death settlements and verdicts page collects reported results in California cases, most from county jails.

Hurt in custody, not killed?

The same failures that cause deaths in prison also leave people seriously hurt: warning signs that were not worked up, an abnormal test no one acted on, a missed medication, or an assault staff could have prevented. A person who survives can bring a federal claim against the individual officers or clinicians, generally within two years, and state-law claims that must start with a claim to the Department of General Services within six months.

Our guides to medical neglect and deliberate indifference and being denied medication in custody explain what these cases require. You can also ask for a free, confidential review.

Deadlines for a CDCR wrongful death claim

For state-law claims against CDCR or the State, a written claim must be presented to the Department of General Services' Government Claims Program within six months of the death (Government Code § 911.2). The filing fee is $25, and it can be waived. If the claim is rejected in writing, you generally have six months from that notice to file suit. A late-claim application is possible only within one year and on narrow grounds, so families lose state claims by waiting.

Federal civil-rights claims under § 1983 against individual officers and medical staff do not require a government claim and generally must be filed within two years.

The person's estate can bring a survival claim, and federal courts in California have allowed the estate to recover for the person's own suffering in some cases. Close family members, such as a spouse and children, and in some circumstances parents or others who depended on the person, can bring a wrongful death claim. Family members may also be able to bring their own federal claim for the loss of their relationship with the person.

What to do in the first weeks

1. Request the autopsy report from the coroner or medical examiner in the county where the death occurred, along with the death certificate, and ask us whether an independent autopsy makes sense.
2. Check the CCHCS death reporting table for the date, prison and listed manner of death.
3. Do not sign anything from CDCR, the State or an insurer before you talk with a lawyer.
4. Write down names, dates and what you were told. Keep letters, emails, voicemails, and messages or calls from your loved one and his cellmates.
5. Call a lawyer well before the six-month mark. We send preservation letters for video, housing-unit logs, medical records and emergency response records.

How LaCour Trial Lawyers handles these cases

LaCour Trial Lawyers is a Pasadena-based trial firm that handles police misconduct and wrongful death in custody cases statewide, with offices from Fresno to Long Beach. A partner leads every case, we have Spanish-speaking lawyers and staff, and there is no fee unless there is a recovery. If your loved one died in a county jail instead, see our overview of deaths in California jails and prisons; for immigration detention, see our guide to ICE detention deaths in California.

Frequently asked questions

This guide is general information about California and federal law and about public records as of its date. It is not legal advice, and reading it or contacting us does not create an attorney–client relationship. Allegations in lawsuits are claims, not findings. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Attorney advertising.