Spotlighting the ugly problems with incarceration deaths (and with data collection by the Justice Department)

Last week brought this notable bipartisan Senate report with a title that largely highlights its main points: “Uncounted Deaths in America’s Prisons & Jails: How the Department Of Justice Failed to Implement the Death In Custody Reporting Act.”  Here is the report’s “Executive Summary”:

Approximately 1.5 million people are incarcerated in state and local correctional facilities throughout the United States.  Thousands die every year.  The Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 (“DCRA 2013” or “the reauthorization”) — reauthorizing a law that first passed in 2000 — requires states that accept certain federal funding to report to the Department of Justice (“DOJ” or “the Department”) about who is dying in prisons and jails.

Over the course of a ten-month bipartisan investigation into DOJ’s implementation of the law, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (“PSI” or “the Subcommittee”) found that DOJ is failing to effectively implement DCRA 2013.  DOJ’s failed implementation of DCRA 2013 undermined the effective, comprehensive, and accurate collection of custodial death data.

This failure in turn undermined transparency and Congressional oversight of deaths in custody.  The Subcommittee has found that DOJ will be at least eight years past-due in providing Congress with the DCRA 2013-required 2016 report on how custodial deaths can be reduced.  The Subcommittee also highlights the following key facts: in Fiscal Year (“FY”) 2021 alone, DOJ failed to identify at least 990 prison and arrest related deaths; and 70% of the data DOJ collected was incomplete.  DOJ failed to implement effective data collection methodology, despite internal warnings from the DOJ Office of the Inspector General (“OIG”) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).  DOJ’s failures were preventable.

Here was just some of the media coverage from the release of this report and the associated hearing:

From The Marshall Project, “‘A Moral Disgrace’: How The U.S. Stopped Counting Deaths Behind Bars

From NBC News, “Hundreds of prison and jail deaths go uncounted by the federal government, report finds

From The Washington Post, “DOJ slammed by senators over poor reporting on deaths in custody“