ABSTRACT

If anybody dies in prison or under police protection, the ca-se should be investigated carefully in order to define, with no suspicion, the death of people who are delivered to govern-ment and in government responsibility; it is also necessary to disclose whether there is lameness in government responsibi-lity or not. In this paper, cases of detainees and convicted pri-soners who died in Konya provincial and district prisons bet-ween 2001 and 2007 and on whom autopsies were performed were evaluated in respect of their demographic features, crimes for which they were imprisoned, location of death, duration of their stay in prison, manner of death and cause of death.

For this purpose, autopsy reports of Konya Branch of Foren-sic Medicine Council between 2001 and 2007 were investigated retrospectively. Ages of 32 detainees and convicted prisoners' death cases, all of whom were male, varied between 25 and 81 and average age was found to be 44.5 ± 15.1 years. Among rea-sons for their imprisonment, it was found that "premeditated murder" was the most seen reason with 11 cases (34.4%). Deaths occurred in prison in 12 cases (37.5%) and in hospital in 20 cases (62.5%). The duration of the cases' stay in prison before their death varied between 1 day and 5 years and average duration was 2.26 years. It was determined that death occurred due to natural causes in 25 cases (78.1%) and among the natu-ral deaths, infections were the first with 9 cases (36%).

The present article points out that if a serious disease that re-quires treatment is detected through periodical examinations conducted at entry to prison and later in detainees and convic-ted prisoners who were imprisoned on account of a crime/cri-me allegation, it would be more appropriate to send them to hospital rather than prison.