What the records show across Illinois

Violence and unsanitary conditions are present in jails around Illinois. Statewide, inspectors found jails failed to meet state standards more than 480 times, a failure rate of 59% between 2019 and 2025. Dozens of people who died in jails never appear in state data.

Deaths in custody

Hundreds of people died in Illinois jails between 2019 and 2025. Illinois Answers identified 238 deaths in county custody. Of those, 26% were not included in the state’s official count of deaths.

Some of these were paperwork errors. Others include incidents of jails never notifying families of their loved one’s death.

More than 230 people died in Illinois county jails between 2019 and 2025

Counted by the state Uncounted Additional details

Illinois Answers withheld the names of some of the deceased at the request of their families.

More than one in four deaths went uncounted between 2019 and 2025

State inspections

Most jails fail to meet state standards each year, which are laid out in Illinois’ County Jails Standards. Those standards haven’t been updated in more than 10 years.

Share of jail inspections ending in noncompliance, by year

The standards jails fail most often

Standard	Examples of requirements	Times cited
Supervision	Rules for 30-minute checks, records for each officer’s shift, nighttime supervision	327
Security	Standards for searches, key control, rules for firearms and control devices such as pepper spray and tasers	174
Personnel	Staffing levels, legal representation for detainees, same-gender supervision for showering	132
Commissary	Rules for how to handle commissary funds, accounting and detainee access	106
Housing	Cell and other room size, furniture standards, shower and bathroom rules, architectural oversight	70
Classification and Separation	Rules for separating detainees by demographics, by health and by whether they have been charged or convicted	45
Medical and Mental Health Care	Jails’ obligations to provide health care to detainees, training to jail staff, record management	37
Sanitation	Cleanliness standards, drinking water, pest control	35
Administration	Proper training, written emergency protocol, CPR training, other procedures	34
Safety	Fire protection, emergency exits, safety orientation, a ban on detainee horseplay	32

More than a dozen jails have never passed

For the nine years of inspections the state makes public, 17 jails have failed all nine. Some fail across multiple categories. Others struggle with one or two.

‘Extraordinary or unusual’ incidents

Between 2019 and 2025, jails reported roughly 80 incidents every week, revealing the regularity that jail administrators and detainees must contend with challenging, often violent, conditions.

Reported incidents by category

Fight among detainees6,858
Battery6,753
Restraints used4,561
OC spray used3,838
Suicide attempt2,135
Hospitalization2,012
Assault on staff1,035
Taser used946
Serious injury771
Sex offense462
Fire316
Forced medication313

A single report can fall into more than one category.

Counties vary in how much they report

Cook County, which operates one of the largest jails in the nation, reports around half of all extraordinary and unusual incidents each year. But it is also home to the largest population in the state by far.

Adjusted for population, downstate metros emerge as reporting disproportionately more incidents.

County	Per 10,000 residents	Incidents	Classification
Peoria	108.8	1,954	metro
Sangamon	74.1	1,441	metro
Fulton	57.5	187	nonmetro-urban
Williamson	52.6	353	nonmetro-urban
De Witt	52.2	80	nonmetro-urban
Madison	51.6	1,356	metro
Coles	48.5	225	nonmetro-urban
Macon	46.5	468	metro
Schuyler	44.4	30	rural
Jefferson	42.7	154	rural

Jails also vary widely in their policies, so a jail filing fewer reports may indicate they aren’t in compliance with state requirements.

Population data taken from 2024 U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Find out more

Illinois Answers Project’s reporting on conditions inside Illinois county jails.