Objectives: This report identifies trends in the number and rate of deaths due to law enforcement actions (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, category "legal intervention") in the United States.
Methods: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Compressed Mortality File was used to determine age-, race-, and sex-specific death rates due to legal intervention for the years 1979 through 1997.
Results: Males account for nearly all deaths, with the death rate for Black males several times that of White males. For both Whites and Blacks, the highest rates of death were observed for ages 20 to 34. Death rates declined significantly from 1979 to 1988 and remained stable thereafter.
Conclusions: While legal intervention is an uncommon cause of death, some subpopulations experience rates of death many times that of the US population as a whole.