Last year, I combed through media releases from the Government of Canada to collect data on inmate deaths announced by Correctional Services Canada in 2024.
I was curious to see how many deaths occurred in Canadian prisons during 2025, so I browsed through them all again, and here’s what I found.
In total, 72 inmates died in custody in 2025.
Of those, 45 died of what CSC called “apparent natural causes”, one of which was specifically from an illness. A Redditor also claimed another was because the inmate was refused his inhaler.
The remainder of the deaths, however, didn’t have a cause listed. A total of 27 inmates fell under this category.
However, there was at least one such death that was under investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police and another that was an apparent assassination, despite the CSC releases saying nothing regarding these developments.
At the bottom of virtually every media release was the following statement:
As in all cases involving the death of an inmate, Correctional Service Canada (CSC) will review the circumstances. CSC policy requires that the police and the coroner be notified.
Ontario had the highest number of inmate deaths, at a total of 20. followed by Québec at 18, British Columbia at 12, and Alberta at 8. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia had the lowest number of inmate deaths of all provinces that had inmates die in custody, with just 1 death each.
The deaths occurred at 24 institutions, 8 of which saw only 1 death. Pacific Institution in Abbotsford, BC, and Millhaven Institution in Bath, Ontario, were tied with the highest number of deaths: 8.
Bath Institution, which is in the same complex as Millhaven, had 7 inmates die in custody last year, with the following institutions all having the third highest number of deaths, 5:
- Stony Mountain Institution (Stony Mountain, MB)
- Regional Psychiatric Centre (Saskatoon, SK)
- Archambault Institution (Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, QC)
July saw the highest number of deaths in a single month: 9. The lowest deaths seen in a single month was 3, which occurred in September and February, which each of them seeing 2 deaths. Not a single month last year was death free. The monthly average was 6.
Many of the inmates who died were in custody because of pretty serious crimes, including murder, assault, arson, robbery, sexual assault, and kidnapping. Only 3 were in prison on drug charges.
Starting in October 2024, Corrections Services Canada stopped including the actual charges people were incarcerated for, so there are two dozen inmates we don’t have charges listed for. The ones we do have charges for were because I tracked them down.
The inmate who had been imprisoned the longest before dying was Darwin Heilman, who had been convicted of manslaughter. He had received an indeterminate sentence in January 1971 and was imprisoned at the Pacific Institution when he died of “apparent natural causes” last April.
The shortest serving inmate was Blair Chisholm, who died of “apparent natural causes” only 11 days after beginning his sentence of 2 years. He was in the Springhill Institution in Nova Scotia, beginning his sentence on 25 June of last year. I was unable to find what charges he had been convicted of. He left behind his 3 siblings and several nieces and nephews.
There were 63 deaths of inmates reported by CSC in 2021, 3 of which were specifically classified as COVID-19 deaths. In 2022, there were 54 reported deaths, followed by 69 in 2023 and 68 in 2024.
You can find a list of all the inmates who died in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 including sentencing and the crimes they were convicted on, here.
