Editor’s note: This story contains reporting about suicides, a topic that will be disturbing to some readers.

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When detention officers at the Wilson County jail found Reggie Monroe, he was already cold to the touch.

He had gone unchecked for at least two hours and died from a fentanyl overdose, according to a state investigative report obtained by The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer. All told, detention officers failed to make timely checks on the 28-year-old father of one through much of the night and into the morning.

Jails are responsible for the safety of their inmates. State regulations require detention officers to check on jail inmates at least twice an hour, and double that if an inmate is considered infirm or unstable. But that didn’t happen with Monroe, jail officials admitted in their response to investigators with the state Department of Health and Human Services.

“My son could have been saved,” said his father, Reginald Monroe, who his son is named after.

Jail deaths in North Carolina dropped significantly last year, the first reduction in seven years. But investigations of the deaths — whether they are deemed suicides, overdoses or deaths from natural causes — continue to reveal supervision failures. As in past years, investigators found them in more than a third of all deaths.

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services reported 46 “in custody” inmate deaths in the jails for 2023, based on reports submitted by county sheriffs as required by law. But another 17 inmates died “out of custody,” and autopsy reports for several show they had become infirm behind bars before dying in local hospitals. Three of them overdosed in jail, records show.

Still, the 63 deceased inmates last year were well below the 90 reported for 2022, by far the highest death toll since DHHS started tracking. Seventy-seven of the 90 deaths that year were inmates still in custody.

Sheriffs, DHHS officials and those who advocate for inmate health and safety welcomed the decrease in deaths. But the toll remains well above what the state was seeing a decade ago when the annual number of deaths was roughly 30.

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