In response to a 2013 law requiring law enforcement agencies to report deaths in custody, the Bureau of Justice Statistics just released Federal Deaths in Custody and During Arrest, 2022. In the report’s methodology, the BJS notes that it contacted 138 agencies and all responded and provided completed survey forms, for a response rate of 100%.
Yet, as two noted scholars wrote in a book released last year, many local and state jurisdictions fall far short of compliance with the 2013 Death in Custody Reporting Act, which was signed into law in 2013 by President Barack Obama, in the wake of the police killings/in-custody deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
The BJS report notes that federal agencies reported 120 arrest-related deaths and 483 deaths in custody in Fiscal Year 2022. Within the past several years, from FY2016 to FY2022, federal agencies reported an average of 72 arrest-related deaths and 501 deaths in custody each year.
The report is the fifth in a series in response to the 2013 act and it covers deaths reported when people are in the custody of five federal agencies, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Department of the Interior, and the Social Security Administration. Most arrest-related deaths during FY2022 were reported by Customs and Border Protection, within the Department of Homeland Security, which reported 44; and within the U.S. Marshals Service, within the Department of Justice, which reported 60. Most deaths in custody, by far, were within the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which reported 395; the U.S. Marshals Services also reported 74.
Yet all law enforcement agencies across the United States, not just federal agencies, are required to report all deaths from the first moment of contact with law enforcement through incarceration.
Many jurisdictions have yet to comply, according to a book released last year, Deaths in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do About It, by Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr. and Jay D. Aronson. “The DCRA established one of several government programs that have been set up to gather information about deaths in custody but that have fundamental flaws relating to responsibilities for reporting, oversight of the reporting process, and who gets to describe the circumstances surrounding the death in custody,” write the authors, who believe that how deaths are counted in custody illustrates long-standing inequalities in the criminal legal system.
As Harvard Public Health noted in “Death Doesn’t Count,” a review of the book, “While police shootings have gained international attention, there are many other instances where people die under more mysterious circumstances—for example, when prisoners die while awaiting trial. Because the details of these deaths can be blurry, and the victims are often branded in the public imagination as deviants, custodial deaths are often treated as if “they had it coming,” and the fact of the death can fall off the general public’s radar.”
As the act requires of all law enforcement agencies, the latest BJS report gives detail on who died and under what circumstances:
Homicides accounted for the largest portion (41%) of arrest-related deaths, followed by accidents (28%) and suicides (23%).
In the arrest-related deaths, 98% of decedents were male, 75% were white, and 53% were ages 25 to 44.
In 55% of arrest-related deaths, law enforcement officers were serving a warrant when they made initial contact with the decedent.
A violent offense was the most serious offense allegedly committed by decedents in 50% of arrest-related deaths.
Decedents attempted to injure law enforcement officers in 35% of arrest-related deaths and discharged a firearm in 38%.
That sort of detail should be available at all levels, Aronson and Mitchell contend in their book. “We know how many Americans die as a result of tobacco use and exposure, how many people are killed by cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, how many people die in work-related accidents, and how many people die as a result of pregnancy-or birth.” … “We could know the death toll of America’s law enforcement and mass incarceration system and take steps to reduce it if we, as a society, collectively wanted to do so.”
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