Deaths in custody, when considered in terms of who dies and how often, unmistakably present a systematized and racialized system of what Zygmant Bauman described (for refugee deaths) as waste disposal: regular police shootings of Black and Indigenous men and women; the disproportionate deaths of Indigenous people and refugees in detention either from neglect or excessive use of force; in nearly all cases, a profound lack of state or official accountability.

To see these deaths as a single, broad, multi-faceted and interconnected phenomenon of the disposability of racialized surplus populations requires making a case for its systematized, racial and global underpinnings. To do so, this website is organized around the concept of racial infrastructure. Each case study offers glimpses into the systems that produce and sustain the deaths of Indigenous and racialized people, such as legal and policy collaborations between states, and a shared repository of racial, professional and scientific knowledges that obscure police use of force and state neglect, instead highlighting disease and dysfunction of those in custody.