he Justice Department undercounted nearly 1,000 deaths in prisons, jails, or during arrests during the last fiscal year, according to the results of a nearly year-long bipartisan investigation.
The 10-month investigation, outlined in a Sept. 20 report released jointly by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the Government Accountability Office, centered on whether the Justice Department (DOJ) has complied with the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) of 2013. DCRA requires the department to collect data from states on deaths in jails and prisons and submit to Congress a report that analyzes that data to propose solutions on how to reduce such deaths. The investigation found that DOJ missed the deaths in custody of 990 people in fiscal year 2021, that data-keeping by the DOJ has been disorderly since 2016, and that the report it is required to produce to Congress will not be complete until 2024—eight years past its due date.
Citizens need to be held accountable for their actions, but governments even more so. The greatest single threats globally to people have not historically been from crime, but from the unjust actions of their own governments. We need to be ever watchful, if not for the sake of others, then for ourselves.
The DOJ can’t be asked or directed to fix its organization if they never submit a usable, honest evaluation of the DOJ organization.
Why has the DOJ been allowed to go 6 years overdue for the report submission? Why hasn’t the Congress fired the DOJ leadership for after such tardiness, a useless report was submitted? What makes ANYONE think the next report will be any higher quality or more accurate?
The system just keeps feeding itself with fertilizer and like fertilizer, look at how it grows……… Maybe someone should consider what happens to the river adjacent to the over fertilized properties … algae blooms that kill the river, irritate everyone, and just stink up the place.
Having the DOJ to investigate itself…yeah, I’m SURE they’re going to find wrong-doing (sarcasm).
Sounds like there needs to be some house cleaning in the DOJ.
The problem or lack of with this story is the world is so messed up right now with what the government is doing this is a big nothing burger to the world.
So more prisoners died than they said did why do they care?
They miscount in order to protect their ‘integrity’.
No surprise. The DOJ and police have understated the number of citizens killed by police for a while.