DLP Dispatch #18
Hello, and welcome to the 18th edition of the Data Liberation Project’s newsletter. Inside: A big announcement, and a new dataset of federal inmate deaths.
The Data Liberation Project’s Future
Some professional news from me: I’ve taken a full-time job as data editor for The New York Times. Unfortunately, this means I can’t continue running the Data Liberation Project.
I’m confident, however, that the DLP’s best days are ahead of it. That’s because, starting this month, two of my favorite organizations are taking it over: MuckRock and Big Local News.
MuckRock — a journalism and transparency non-profit — will run the Data Liberation Project’s day-to-day operations, develop new DLP FOIA requests, and urge government agencies to respond as fully as possible.
Big Local News — a data-sharing platform and collaborative in support of local journalism — will lead the documentation of liberated datasets, develop reporting recipes around them, and train journalists in how to use them.
I’ve admired MuckRock and Big Local for many years, and I couldn’t be happier to see the Data Liberation Project in their hands. What will this mean for you? Hopefully only good things. We’ve been trying to make the transition as smooth as possible. All links to DLP data and documentation should continue to function. And both organizations are eager to continue working with volunteers, so those opportunities aren’t disappearing.
You can read more in MuckRock and Big Local’s concurrent announcement. The new leadership will also be hosting monthly discussions about the Data Liberation Project; click here to register for the first event, scheduled for October 22 @ 2pm Eastern.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to let me know. In the meantime, I’d like to thank you, deeply, for your interest in the Data Liberation Project; it has meant a lot to me.
New Dataset: Federal Inmate Deaths
This August, the Data Liberation Project filed a FOIA request to the Bureau of Prisons seeking data records representing each federal inmate death since 2005.
Less than a month later, the agency responded and provided a spreadsheet with most of what we requested.
Today, we're sharing the spreadsheet with the public. It is, to our knowledge, the most extensive dataset on individual federal inmate deaths publicly available.
The spreadsheet contains 8,242 entries, each representing a deceased inmate, and includes the following columns:
RegisterNum: BOP Register NumberNameLast: Last name; no first names providedSex: Either "Female" or "Male"Race: Either "Asian", "Black", "Black-Hispanic", "Native American", "White", "White-Hispanic", "Unknown", or "Other"DOD: Date of deathInstID: Assigned institution/facility (represented via BOP's standard three-letter codes)DeathCategory: One of 35 categories, such as "Cancer", "Drug Overdose", or "Pending Autopsy"ICD10 Prime: ICD-10 code for the primary cause of death, or "UNK"ICD10 Second: ICD-10 code for the secondary cause of death, or "UNK"
For slightly more context, please see our landing page for the dataset.
Many thanks to Data Liberation Project volunteer Jake J. Smith for his help with this FOIA request, and to the BOP FOIA office for their speed in fulfilling it.
That’s all for now. Thanks again for your interest in the Data Liberation Project and don’t hesitate to reply.
— Jeremy