US Senate probe finds Justice Dept undercounted state prison deaths

A bipartisan US Senate investigation has found that the Justice Department has been severely under-counting the number of state prison and arrest-related deaths in the United States.

The US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations conducted a 10-month investigation along with the Government Accountability Office, the investigative watchdog of Congress, Reuters reported.

The panel issued a 25-page report on Tuesday. The report pointed out that the Justice Department failed to count at least 990 deaths in 2021 alone.

"Of the 990 uncounted deaths, 341 were prison deaths disclosed on states’ public websites and 649 were arrest-related deaths disclosed in a reliable, public database," they said.

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Seventy percent of the records the department composed on state prison deaths in 2021 were missing at least one data field required by law, according to the report. In addition, 40% of the records did not include the circumstances surrounding the deaths of prisoners.

The Justice Department must ask the Death in Custody Reporting Act to collect data about inmate deaths inside all state and local prisons that accept federal funding under federal law.

The department's Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program (JAG) has awarded billions of dollars to police departments, state prisons and jails since 2005.

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The federal law required the Justice Department to submit to Congress a report on how deaths inside local prisons and jails can be prevented.

But the Senate investigation said the department has not only under-reported deaths but that it has still not turned over the mandated report on time.

The vast majority of the inmates in US prisons are from Black and Hispanic communities.

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