The Alaska Department of Corrections has reported 18 people have died in custody of the state’s prisons and jails so far this year – on par with the state’s highest death count in 2022. Advocates and lawmakers say the number is “devastating” and “preventable,” and are calling for the reinstatement of an independent oversight body to investigate.
The count now brings the total in-custody deaths reported by DOCsince 2020 to 84, an increasing number in recent years with at least 15 deaths reported in 2024 and 10 deaths in 2023.
“It’s devastating, it’s preventable, and it’s unacceptable that there haven’t been any changes made to reduce deaths in custody,” said Megan Edge, director of integrated justice with the ACLU of Alaska in an interview.
DOC officials, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on the number of the deaths.
The ACLU is calling for the reinstatement of an independent oversight body to investigate the circumstances of in-custody deaths and reduce risks, Edge said.
The state created a special internal investigative unit in DOC in 2016, following a 2015 report that widespread failures and dysfunction within the system led to at least six in-custody deaths. But the unit was dissolved in 2018 during budget cuts under the Dunleavy administration.
Betsy Holley, a spokesperson for DOC, declined an interview but said by email Wednesday that the agency has no plans to resurrect that unit.
“The unit was eliminated, reducing duplicative functions, reducing costs and moving to a more transparent investigative process,” she said.
The Alaska State Troopers, with the Alaska Department of Public Safety, investigate death incidents, not DOC, she said. “DPS is the investigative agency assigned to review incidents and because they are not affiliated with DOC, investigations are conducted independently, ensuring neutrality and objectivity,” Holley said.
Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, and chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said he will look into the process of creating such a system in the next legislative session. He said it should be external and independent from DOC. “There’s just no doubt that the way we currently have it, which is that there’s not really any organized official oversight happening, it’s just unacceptable,” he said.
Gray said he would like to see an independent unit created to investigate DOC deaths, so that details and reports can be verified, and best practices are in use.
“We can’t verify that they are following the correct protocols, that there are ways of reporting warning signs, or assessing folks who are at risk. We have no way of knowing,” he said. “And when we have a death toll that’s high, we have a right to question if there are mistakes being made, and we are questioning whether mistakes have been made.”
The ACLU is also calling for changes in Alaska law to allow more people who are elderly and with terminal illnesses to be released on medical and geriatric parole, which Gray said his office would be pursuing in the next legislative session starting in January.
At least 18 reported deaths by DOC in 2025, one more by the ACLU
Most recently, DOC reported the death of Kane Huff, 46, on Dec. 15 in Goose Creek Correctional Center, bringing the state’s total in-custody deaths for this year to 18 people.
DOC releases limited information on the causes and circumstances around in-custody deaths. But the department included a note when it announced eight of this year’s deaths — nearly half of them, including Kane’s — saying in the case of an “expected death” the Alaska State Troopers and State Medical Examiner’s office are notified. That office determines the cause of death.
Alaska’s prison population is aging, with an estimated 21% being 55 and older, according to DOC data. DOC officials testified to the Alaska State Legislature earlier this year that more in custody deaths were due to “natural causes,” including acute and chronic disease and illness — or 68% of deaths since 2016.
Over half of this year’s in-custody deaths, or ten people, were over the age of 60. The oldest was Keith Landers, at 94 years old, who died on Nov. 24, and the youngest was Christopher Ligons, 30 years old who died on June 28.
At least four of the deaths have been ruled suicides, according to Alaska State Troopers, news reports and investigation by the ACLU of Alaska. One was Aaron Merritt, who died on Nov. 26 and was a Kenai church member, as reported by KDLL Public Radio.
Seven people died this year while under arrest and awaiting trial – one person in custody for less than a day – and two people were convicted and awaiting sentencing.
At least two in-custody deaths followed violent altercations. Jeffrey Foreman, 53, died on Jul. 11 after being restrained by correctional officers after a fight with a cellmate in the Anchorage Correctional Complex, according to Alaska Public Media.
Not on the DOC list this year is William Farmer, 36, who died in an Anchorage hospital on Jan. 6, after an assault by a cellmate in the Anchorage Correctional Complex. The case involved mental health issues and DOC failed to release the cellmate who was found incompetent to stand trial. Both families have questioned why the two men were placed in the same cell, according to reporting by the Anchorage Daily News.
DOC has said the case was not reported as an in-custody death because Farmer was released on bail after he was hospitalized. The ACLU has criticized DOC for a pattern of releasing inmates who are hospitalized or dying.
DOC attributes more deaths to natural causes
DOC medical and correctional officials testified to the Legislature earlier this year that more in-custody deaths were due to natural causes, like chronic disease and illness, whereas in previous years more deaths were attributed to drug overdoses.
Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Robert Lawrence, who previously served as the chief medical officer for DOC from 2013 to 2024, said in an interview last year that the state’s inmate population has higher needs for care than the state’s population as a whole.
“Prisons are not just warehouses where we put people. These are neighborhoods within the larger community. And one of the things that we recognize about this unique neighborhood that is a correctional institution is that it tends to have a concentrating effect, meaning that any of the issues that we’re dealing with in the community get concentrated within this prison environment,” he said.
ACLU’s Edge said the increasing physical and mental health care needs of inmates is well known, and DOC should be doing more to provide adequate care.
“It’s not new and is not unique. People in prison are some of the often sickest people in our society and in Alaska especially, because we have such limited resources for physical and mental health care and substance use treatment,” Edge said. “Often the response in our communities is to incarcerate people. If people are homeless, they are taken to jail. People with mental illness are often put in jail. People experiencing substance use disorder are put in jail.”
She pointed to the state of Alaska’s legal obligation to provide people with health care while they’re in custody, including access to mental health care resources and treatment.
“We hear stories from people who are experiencing suicidal ideation and thrown into solitary confinement, stripped of their clothing and placed in a suicide smock till they say they feel better,” she said. “That’s not mental health care.”
On average, 4,500 people are incarcerated in Alaska’s jails and prisons each year, either awaiting trial or sentencing, or serving criminal sentences. That average population has been steady over the last decade. Edge pointed out that the death rate is growing, while the overall population is not.
“Our death numbers continue to rise and stay disproportionately high for the amount of people that we actually have incarcerated,” she said.
Deaths prompt legal action
The ACLU filed a federal class-action lawsuit in May challenging DOC’s health care system as inadequate and inhumane, which includes an investigation and documentation of a variety of cases where inmates’ failed to be treated, resulting in deteriorating health conditions.
The civil rights group is also part of two wrongful death lawsuits, one for Lewis Jordan Jr. who suffered an untreated ear infection while incarcerated at Goose Creek Correctional Center in 2023 that developed into fatal meningitis.
The lawsuit claims “deliberate indifference” from DOC, and that Jordan’s death was preventable. The families of James Rider and Mark Cook Jr., who died in pretrial custody in 2022 and 2023, have also filed lawsuits seeking restitution and damages.
Expanding opportunities for medical and geriatric parole
For the elderly and those with severe or terminal illnesses, Gray said he would like to see Alaska move toward a compassionate release program, which would also be a cost saving measure for the state.
“I think people kind of know this intuitively. Folks in their sixties and seventies need to see the doctor more than folks in their twenties and thirties, and so if we’re incarcerating a large population of folks who are older, they’re going to require a lot more health care, and that health care is more expensive,” Gray said.
The cost to the state for incarceration is estimated to be $202 per person per day in Alaska, compared to an estimated $13 per day on parole.
“It is extraordinarily expensive. We cannot afford to be running basically nursing homes in our prisons,” Gray said. “We have a mechanism in Alaska for those folks who are very, very, very unlikely to be able to commit any more crimes, let’s get them out of our system. Let’s get them back to their families.”
Alaska has a special medical and geriatric parole to release those who are elderly and with a terminal illness, and have been found to no longer pose a risk to the public.
But that system is not currently being used – the Alaska Parole Board has not granted anyone medical or geriatric release in the last five years, since 2020.
Edge said due to restrictions in the current law for those convicted of unclassified felonies – like first-degree murder and sexual assault – people may not be eligible for parole. It would require the legislature to take action to change the law.
“So it’s really inaccessible for the people that actually need it,” Edge said. “I’m thinking of one person in particular who was wheelchair bound, blind and in his eighties. And his family, his children, had a plan to take care of him, and he could not get out. He was denied discretionary parole, and was ineligible for geriatric and special medical parole because he was convicted of an unclassified felony.”
Deaths reported by DOC in 2025:
Pedro George Rubke, 78
Reginald Eugene Childers, Jr., 42
Nathaniel David Leask, 49
Marcias Zoritas Reinhold, 83
Lena Lola Lynn, 63
Alvin Lynn Archa Jr., 62
Carl K Thompson, 68
Christopher Ligons, 30
Jeffrey Daniel Foreman, 53
Mattfi Abruska, 78
Robert Ahvik, 62
Joshua Paul Keeling, 35
Kurt Charles Malutin, 37
Barry John McCormack, 74
Donald Scott Hotch Sr., 78
Keith Landers, 93
Aaron Scott Merritt, 45
Kane William Huff, 46