Letter to the Hon. William Barr, Attorney General - Scott Presses Attorney General Barr to Enforce Law to Record Deaths in Police Custody

Letter

As our nation continues to mourn and protest the senseless and avoidable death of George Floyd
at the hands of law enforcement, I respectfully request that the Department of Justice
(Department) take immediate action to implement and enforce the Death in Custody Reporting
Act (DCRA) of 2013.
The Department has been derelict in its duty to collect accurate information about police
misconduct and the conditions of incarceration in this country. The DCRA simply requires
States to report quarterly information to the Attorney General about the death of any person
detained by law enforcement, in the process of arrest, or in custody. That data would include any
individual incarcerated in a state or federal jail, prison, or juvenile facility. An accurate,
nationwide count on the number of individuals dying while in the of custody of law enforcement
is critical in assessing the scope of a problem that persists in this country. The harrowing video
of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers underscores what many
Americans already know: that others have suffered the same fate, but their death has gone
unrecorded and those responsible were not held to account. Congress and the Executive branch
must know the depths of the problem in order to eliminate avoidable deaths and criminal police
behavior in our justice system.
In December 2018, the Department's Inspector General issued a report on the Department's
failure to implement the law and provided recommendations to ensure compliance. Over the next
year, the Department made little to no progress in implementing many of the Inspector General's
recommendations. Earlier this year, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler and
Crime Subcommittee Chair Karen Bass called for an investigation into the Department's failure
to collect DCRA data and to implement the IG's recommendations.
I remain concerned that the Department set aside the compliance guidance published in the
Federal Register on December 19, 2016, and instead submitted a new data collection method on
June 11, 2018. Relying on media reports of deaths in custody and a voluntary program in which
state law enforcement agencies voluntarily report deaths in custody proved to be an unreliable
and inaccurate method for collecting this information. The Department soon abandoned this
flawed methodology and has since tasked the Bureau of Justice Assistance with collecting this
important information.
In January of this year, the Department finally created a process for States to begin collecting
and reporting data. The DCRA became law in 2014, and six years later the Department has not
published accurate and reliable data on the number of deaths in police custody. It has abandoned
the law's goal of collecting data about all deaths in custody, such as suicides, homicides, and
deaths by natural causes, and instead engaged in bureaucratic shuffling.
I am also concerned that the Department has not enforced the mandatory reporting requirement
and exercised the law's enforcement mechanism: a maximum 10 percent loss of a State's federal
funds under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant. It is critical that the
Department make clear to the States that the reporting requirement is mandatory and penalize
States that have refused to comply with the law.
Men and women continue to die at the hands of law enforcement. Policymakers do not have
access to government data on the nature and circumstances of these deaths. Instead the public
and lawmakers must rely solely on the work of non-profit organizations and the media. Despite
the tremendous work of investigative journalists and these non-profit organizations in cataloging
deaths in custody, there is still an incomplete picture of the problem. The Department cannot
abdicate its duty to the public in this matter any longer.

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