Justice Department Undercounts Prison, Jail Deaths By Nearly 1,000, Senate Finds

At least 990 deaths in state prisons and local jails went uncounted by the federal government in fiscal year 2021 alone, indicating failures in how the Justice Department oversees the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA), reports NBC News.

The discovery was part of a 10-month investigation by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The Senate investigation report found that from October to December 2019, the department’s bureau responsible for data collection “did not capture any state prison deaths in eleven states or any local jail deaths in 12 states and the District of Columbia.”

In many cases, the DOJ missed death counts that are readily available on public websites and in arrest-related databases. Some 70 percent of records supplied to the Justice Department in fiscal year 2021 were also missing at least one field of information related to the deaths.

The failure to implement the DCRA and to continue to voluntarily publish this information is “a missed opportunity to prevent avoidable deaths,” the report said.

The fact that a substantial number of in-custody deaths involve people who were being held before trial and hadn’t yet been convicted further indicates the urgency of the situation, the report said.

“DOJ’s failure to implement DCRA [the Death in Custody Reporting Act, passed 2013] has deprived Congress and the American public of information about who is dying in custody and why,” the report concluded.

“This information is critical to improve transparency in prisons and jails, identifying trends in custodial deaths that may warrant corrective action—such as failure to provide adequate medical care, mental health services, or safeguard prisoners from violence—and identifying specific facilities with outlying death rates. “

 According to Reason, changes to the DCRA reporting requirements for states have degraded what was supposed to be a strong law.