Published On: September 1st, 2023Categories: Colorado News

The Lemon Creek Correctional Center. (Photo courtesy Alaska Department of Corrections)

The deaths of two men by suicide in Alaska prisons in the past year have prompted legal advocates to sue the state on their families’ behalf.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska filed its wrongful death lawsuit Thursday against the Department of Corrections seeking a financial settlement, as well as an independent investigation of deaths among people jailed in Alaska, which hit a record high in 2022.

“The state has a moral and a legal obligation to provide whatever care necessary to keep the thousands of people in Department of Corrections’ custody safe and healthy,” said Megan Edge, director of the ACLU of Alaska’s Prison Project. “And it became clear that they were failing to do so.”

The families of two jailed men who died – James Rider and Mark Cook Jr. – are included as plaintiffs in separate lawsuits, with the ACLU representing Rider’s family and the law firm Friedman Rubin representing Cook’s.

In both cases, Edge said, DOC staff and procedures did not address the mental health issues either man was suffering from.

“They took two people in crisis who needed access to medical care and put them in solitary confinement. That is not medical care, that is torture,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Corrections said Friday that the department had not yet been served with the lawsuits and declined to comment.

According to the ACLU, 18 people died in DOC custody last year, the most ever in a single year.

RELATED: Families, activists question why so many people in Alaska’s jails and prisons have died this year


Casey Grove is the host of Alaska News Nightly and a general assignment reporter at Alaska Public Media with an emphasis on crime and courts. Reach him at cgrove@alaskapublic.org.

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Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage
2023-09-01 19:13:15
Alaska Public Media

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