Journalists: How to Include Family Perspectives in Prison Death Coverage

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Family members of people who died behind bars are a critical part of the reporting process. They can help establish a timeline of events by sharing what complaints they heard leading up to the death and providing access to much-needed documents such as medical records. Including these details in your reporting can help readers understand the emotional toll of deaths behind bars. Families may also be pursuing a lawsuit when deaths are presumed to be wrongful, which can provide you access to additional documentation.

Speaking with families opens up two main lines of reporting. The first is accountability-focused. Reporters can identify the information gaps families face while trying to learn what led to a death and the policy-driven obstacles involved with acquiring the remains and keepsakes of their loved ones. The second is service-oriented. With families in mind, The Marshall Project created a guide on the steps families can take to get information or seek accountability after a loss. Both of these lines of reporting were powered by a callout that connected us with people wanting to share their stories.

Below, we’ve summarized recommendations from Engagement Reporter Aala Abdullahi on how to reach and work with families who have lost someone in custody. News creators can request a consultation to brainstorm any part of this process. If you would like further guidance on investigating deaths in jails and prisons, check out this reporting toolkit, which includes public records strategies, expert sources, a free illustration and a webinar.

Start with pre-reporting

All of The Marshall Project’s reporting on what families go through after a death in custody was powered by a simple callout. Feel free to adapt this language for your local coverage needs (just please credit The Marshall Project somewhere on your callout).

Like most reporting projects, the first step of creating a callout is doing an initial clip search. Clips can help identify specific reporting themes or questions to address in your callout. Reading past coverage can also help you identify important sources and trends — whether it’s the same facility showing up repeatedly, certain types of deaths happening across your state or recurring names (lawyers, organizations, medical examiners or other death investigators) that could become sources. You can use these initial findings as the basis for more specific questions in your callout.

Clip searches can support targeted background reporting. In addition to surfacing themes, past coverage often reveals the same lawyers, advocates and investigators across multiple cases. Speaking with those sources before launching a callout can help clarify what families typically need first, which documents they usually do or do not have and where the process most often breaks down. That context makes it possible to turn broad patterns into practical, family-facing questions, so a callout doesn’t just ask what happened but also engages where people are getting stuck.

Review policies on carceral deaths

When an incarcerated person dies, there are procedures that staff are mandated to follow. Abdullahi contacted every state corrections department and the Bureau of Prisons to track down these policies, ultimately hearing back from 26 states.

You can view those policies here. While there are several policy outliers that we’ve noted in this resource sheet, there are some overarching themes worth exploring, including:

• The timelines tend to be vague. Many families, advocates and lawyers say that having clear timelines for processes such as investigations, the release of the body and the release of property would be more humane.

• Basic communications with the family may not be required. When families call a facility to ask questions, they’re often met with silence if there isn’t a designated contact responsible for returning their calls.

• The financial burden of funeral arrangements is systematically placed on families. Costs for transport and burial are significant and can impact a family’s decision to claim their loved one’s remains.

Design a callout

The callout is an opportunity to both solicit more information and build trust with potential sources. To achieve both aims, it is important to be transparent about the next steps of the reporting process. At minimum, the callout should include:

• A statement on privacy or how you’ll use the information provided.

• A note explaining how/if the reporter will follow up to request an interview.

• An assurance that respondents’ stories will not be made public without their permission.

Incorporating trauma-informed language is another essential step for building trust. Consider making clear that families can share as much or as little as they want. Reminding people that they’re in charge of their own narratives fosters a sense of agency about a situation that has likely felt out of their control. Here is some sample language:

We understand that sharing your story or revisiting painful details can be difficult. You can share as much or as little as you’re comfortable with, and you can stop at any time.

You can also keep the process easy and focused for respondents by using conditional logic, which allows question branching. This prevents respondents from seeing questions that aren’t relevant to them and can keep the callout short. Conditional logic is available for most form builders, including Google Forms and Airtable. Start by having respondents answer basic questions, such as:

• Who died? i.e., their first and last name.
• Where did they die? i.e., in their cell, in a hospital, in a prison medical facility.
• What is the name of the facility? i.e., the official name of the facility. This is helpful in case you’re looking at specific facilities in your state.
• How did they die? i.e., the specific type of death, such as suicides, homicides or drug overdoses.
• What happened? i.e., a general overview of the details they know about the death.

Based on their responses to these initial questions, you can reveal additional questions and/or you can ask respondents if they want to opt in to a set of more detailed questions, which will be unlocked if they answer “yes.”

For more guidance on working with justice-affected sources, check out this reporting toolkit, which includes language, style and ethical guidance.

Promote your callout

To make the callout work it has to reach the people you’re trying to hear from! For deaths in custody, that usually means getting it in front of families through trusted advocates. These are people and groups who already have relationships with those who are grieving and looking for answers.

Consider using multiple distribution channels:

• Trusted advocates: Prioritize outreach to lawyers, advocacy groups, organizers and community leaders who regularly support families after deaths in custody. These intermediaries can share the callout directly with people, and their willingness to pass it along can signal that the project is legitimate and intentional.

• Facebook groups and community spaces: Families often gather in private or semi-private online groups to share updates, advice and other information. When joining or posting in these spaces as a journalist, it helps to contact group admins first, explain the reporting project and ask permission to share. If allowed, posting the callout directly (and staying available to answer questions) can reduce skepticism and confusion.

• Existing lists and past contacts: If your newsroom already has an email list of families, advocates or community partners from prior coverage, use it. A direct email can reach people more reliably than a social media post and gives recipients a clear way to verify the newsroom and follow up.

• Stories that have already been publicly shared: Some families have already posted about a death in custody through platforms like GoFundMe, Change.org or public social media posts. Those posts can function as a reporting lead list. Outreach through these platforms is imperfect — messages may not be seen — but it’s possible to contact petition organizers to let them know about the project you’re working on. Keep in mind that families and loved ones may be at different stages of the grieving process, so look for clear language or signs that suggest they are actively seeking support, attention or accountability.

Conduct your interviews

If you have capacity, conducting a short intake call with a respondent can help build rapport before scheduling the formal interview. Either way, consider creating a simple script that helps respondents understand the reporting process before the interview gets underway. We’ve found that expectation-setting is helpful to keep sources from getting cold feet and backing out at the last minute.

• Explain your timeline. Will the story take weeks or months to publish? Will you update them along the way? At what interval?

• Explain the stakes of going public. Make sure your source understands what they are signing up for if they agree to be interviewed. This includes safety considerations, such as if there’s any possibility of blowback.

• Set clear boundaries. Discuss what journalists can and can’t do, so expectations are clear. It’s helpful to note that journalists can investigate, verify facts and ask tough questions, but we can’t force agencies to release documents, bring legal action or guarantee justice.

• Engage the lawyers. Ask if the family is seeking legal action, in which case they should tell their lawyer what they can share with the media and when. You may also want to talk to the lawyer to corroborate their story.

• Explain the fact check. Let sources know you’ll have to corroborate what they say and ask if they have supporting evidence. Clarify that only factual errors can be changed once a story is published.

• Explain their role. Remind sources that participation is voluntary and they can set boundaries regarding what they choose to share. Tell people if there’s a chance you won’t use their story.

The best-case scenario is that you walk away from each interview with both the chronological and emotional narratives. We suggest that you ask a mix of personal and logistical questions, ending with reflective questions to get a sense of what they wished had been different and what they would tell other families.

Pin down the facts

It can be challenging to corroborate certain details that families share with you. Here are fact-checking strategies to deploy as early as possible:

• Ask families to provide any documentation they have. This could be the death certificate, the autopsy report, any communications the family has had with agency officials over email and lawsuit filings. You could also ask to speak with their lawyer.

• Think outside the box on other records requests. Along with state policies on carceral deaths, there may be other procedural documents you can get, such as property return procedures, paperwork about body disposition and unclaimed remains, and any training documentation related to specific scenarios, like how staff should handle a crime scene. Avoid blanket records requests, which can cause delays, by reviewing our toolkit on how to figure out the paper trail.

• Submit lingering questions for official comment or confirmation. This should be done as you’re nearing publication while still offering agencies enough time to respond, perhaps about two weeks beforehand. When seeking comments from agencies, frame questions around the underlying facts and records rather than relaying a family’s specific allegations, so families are not exposed or put at risk prior to publication. Within the story, explain what facts you were able to verify through official channels and documentation. If you’ve exhausted these approaches and are unable to confirm an allegation, you may need to omit that detail or attribute it solely to the family.