ArticleMedical anthropology quarterly2024
Naturalizing unnatural death in Los Angeles County jails.
Article in Medical anthropology quarterly, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- The role of epidemiologists in addressing the public health consequences of the United States criminal legal system.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Biased and Biasing: The Hidden Bias Cascade and Bias Snowball Effects.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Mortality Classification for Deaths With Nonfirearm Force by Police, 2012-2021.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- A healing justice approach to grief in communities of color.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Deaths among adults under supervision of the England and Wales' probation services: variation in individual and criminal justice-related factors by cause of death.Health & justice · 2024Article
- The Complexity of "Natural" Deaths Behind Bars.Academic forensic pathology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In this paper we use quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how death investigations in Los Angeles County jails disproportionately naturalize death among Black and Latino incarcerated people. Our study is based on an assessment of 58 autopsies, coroner investigator narratives, and toxicology reports produced between 2009 and 2018. We found that the Medical Examiner frequently arrived at natural or undetermined death determinations that minimized the culpability of carceral staff for loss of life that occurred within county jail. In our dataset, Black people were disproportionately classified as natural. Undetermined deaths were almost exclusively Latino. More than 75% of the cases in our study were deaths that occurred before standing trial. Our findings reveal how biomedical knowledge about incarcerated Black and Latino people is used to erase the life-diminishing effects of punishment, neglect, and maltreatment that are central to the project of mass incarceration.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.