This paper explores the findings of my MA thesis, which I completed in 2017. The thesis critically examines 108 coroners’ reports into deaths in New Zealand prisons. It provides both quantitative analysis of the kinds of deaths and demographics of the deceased, and also outlines how the material conditions of confinement facilitate the death of the prisoner. Using critical discourse analysis, it demonstrates the irreconcilable contradictions in the state’s account for the death of the prisoner, as well as the inevitable absences in the coroners’ reports
