Why America Can’t Reliably Track Deaths in Jails and Prisons

The Missing Count of Jail Deaths in America

1. A Puzzle We Can’t Solve

In the United States, a critical puzzle remains unsolved: How many people die each year while in the custody of law enforcement? The answer, disturbingly, is that we don’t have a complete or accurate count. This significant data gap prevents public health officials, the justice system, and the public from understanding the circumstances of these deaths. Without reliable data, the nation’s ability to identify and address systemic issues—from inadequate medical care to patterns of violence—is severely limited, compromising public health and hindering efforts to prevent future tragedies.

This failure has a profound human cost. As a 2022 report from the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations concluded, the government’s inability to properly collect this information is a serious lapse in accountability.

“DOJ’s failure to implement this law and to continue to voluntarily publish this information is a missed opportunity to prevent avoidable deaths.”

To understand why this data is so elusive, we must start with the most basic source of information about a person’s death and expose its fundamental flaws.

2. The First Clue: The Problem with Death Certificates

A death certificate is the “single most important source of information on cause and manner of death.” It serves as a legal document and provides the vital statistics used for health policy and research. However, when it comes to tracking deaths in custody, death certificates present two fundamental problems.

1. They Are Often Wrong Despite their importance, death certificates are frequently inaccurate. Studies have found that errors in the stated cause or manner of death appear in approximately 33% to 41% of cases. This high error rate makes them an unreliable foundation for building a national database.
2. They Don’t Track Custody Status There is no universal requirement or standard field on a death certificate to indicate that the person died while in the custody of a correctional facility or law enforcement agency. This means that even a perfectly accurate certificate provides no systematic way to identify and count these specific deaths.

Recognizing these limitations, the federal government attempted to create a more direct and reliable solution.

3. A Law to Find the Truth: The Deaths in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA)

The federal government’s most significant attempt to collect this data is the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA). First passed in 2000 and reauthorized in 2013, the law requires states to report information on deaths that occur in law enforcement custody and in correctional facilities to the federal government.

Here are the key aspects of the current law, DCRA 2013:

• The Goal: To collect comprehensive statistics on deaths occurring in law enforcement custody and at correctional facilities, including information about the deceased and the circumstances of their death.
• The Incentive: The Department of Justice (DOJ) can reduce a state’s funding under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program by up to 10% for not complying with reporting requirements.
• The Reality: Despite this financial incentive, the DOJ “has yet to impose a JAG penalty on non-compliant states.”

To implement the law, the DOJ assigned the task to two different agencies over time, leading to a critical handoff that profoundly impacted the quality of the data.

4. The Data Detectives: A Tale of Two Agencies

The story of the DCRA’s implementation is a tale of two vastly different government bodies, each with its own mission, capabilities, and ultimately, results.

4.1. The First Detective: The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)

Initially, the responsibility for data collection fell to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the primary statistical agency of the DOJ. BJS achieved remarkable success in its program to collect data on deaths in jails and state prisons, obtaining average annual response rates of 98% for local jails and 100% for state prisons.

However, BJS struggled with a separate program to track arrest-related deaths, eventually discontinuing it in 2014 over “concerns about data quality and coverage issues” after determining it was undercounting these deaths, identifying only about half of the arrest-related deaths that occurred each year. In 2016, BJS ceased collecting death-in-custody data from state and local entities to maintain its mandated autonomy from policy-making activities, as the DCRA’s enforcement was tied to grant funding. This decision, while principled from a statistical standpoint, created the vacuum that would lead to the program’s collapse, revealing a fundamental conflict between the government’s need for objective data and its use of data as a tool for policy enforcement.

4.2. A Fumbled Handoff: The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) Takes Over

In 2016, the responsibility for collecting state and local data was transferred to the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), a grant-making agency within the DOJ. This transition proved deeply problematic. According to Michelle Garcia of the BJA, the agency was ill-equipped for the task.

BJA is a grant-making organization and…what had been a function of one of our research arms [BJS]…has now gone over to a grantmaking agency that did not have the infrastructure in place originally to be able to fully execute.

The impact of this fumbled handoff was severe. A 2022 Senate report concluded that the DOJ “failed to properly manage the transition” and that “BJA’s failure to properly collect and report on custodial death data stands in marked contrast to BJS’s successful efforts.”

These institutional failures created a cascade of problems that continue to blur our understanding of what is happening inside America’s jails and prisons.

5. The Data Puzzle: Why the Picture is Still So Blurry

The system fails at every level, from the states that submit incomplete data to the federal agency that publishes it with a warning not to trust it. Even with a federal law in place, a clear and accurate picture of deaths in custody remains elusive.

• Incomplete State Reporting: A 2022 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed the shocking state of the data. For fiscal year 2021, 70% of state-submitted records were missing at least one required piece of information. The GAO also identified nearly 1,000 deaths that were likely never reported to the federal government at all.
• Challenges for State Agencies: The State Administering Agencies (SAAs) responsible for gathering and reporting the data often lack the necessary funding, resources, or legal authority to compel local jails and law enforcement agencies to provide complete and timely information.
• Unreliable Official Data: The quality of the data collected by the BJA is so poor that the agency publishes it with a stark disclaimer, directly warning against its use for analysis.

The contrast between the two agencies tasked with this work highlights a systemic breakdown.

As the government’s efforts have faltered, other groups have stepped in to try to solve the puzzle themselves.

6. Citizen Investigators: Filling in the Gaps

Because the official data is so incomplete and unreliable, researchers, universities, and journalists have launched their own data collection efforts to fill the void. These independent projects use public records requests and investigative reporting to assemble a more accurate picture, revealing the scale of the government’s failure.

• Incarceration Transparency: This project from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law uses public records to uncover detailed statistics. Its findings reveal critical demographic trends the federal data misses. In Louisiana, for example, the project found Black individuals accounted for over 57% of deaths in custody between 2015 and 2021, despite making up only 33% of the state’s population.
• The Associated Press (AP): An investigation by the AP identified 1,036 deaths between 2012 and 2021 following law enforcement use of less-lethal force. These citizen-led efforts reveal the granular detail the federal government fails to capture: that in nearly three-quarters of these deaths, the person was restrained face-down; that in over half the cases, a Taser was used; and that the most common manner of death in these uncounted cases was ruled an accident or left undetermined—categories that demand further scrutiny.

These efforts, while essential, are not a substitute for a comprehensive national system. They bring us back to the central question: why does a reliable count truly matter?

7. Why Every Number Represents a Life

Despite federal laws and designated government agencies, the United States does not have a trustworthy system for counting people who die in jails, prisons, or during an arrest. This failure stems from a chain of weaknesses: flawed death certificates, a problematic handoff between a statistical agency and a grant-making one, and persistent challenges in collecting complete data from thousands of state and local jurisdictions. The Department of Justice’s refusal to use its authority to penalize non-compliant states underscores a lack of political will to solve the problem.

This is far more than an issue of statistics. As the Senate report warned, this failure is a “missed opportunity to prevent avoidable deaths.” Comprehensive, accurate data is essential for accountability and change. It can be leveraged to improve public health, ensure justice is served, and identify specific facilities with alarmingly high death rates. Knowledge of the circumstances of deaths in custody can lead to preventative measures, from better mental healthcare to improved officer training, that enhance population health and save lives.

Without a complete and public count, we are missing the opportunity to learn from these tragedies and implement evidence-based policies to prevent them. Every missing number represents a life, and until we can reliably count every death, our ability to protect those in custody remains tragically incomplete.

Contact A Wrongful Death Lawyer Near You

Even if a loved one is incarcerated, they still retain fundamental rights, including the right to safety and humane treatment. If they pass away while in jail, it is crucial that their death is thoroughly investigated to ensure accountability. Authorities must examine the circumstances surrounding the incident, and if negligence or misconduct is found, those responsible should be held accountable to uphold justice. If you have lost a loved one who was in prison at the time of their death and feel that their death was avoidable we urge you to reach out to the team here at the Lovely Law Firm. We will do all we can to get you the answers you’re looking for and fight for justice. Contact our office to book a free case consultation with one of our wrongful death attorneys in Myrtle Beach.