Lamar Smith: “The Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2000 directed the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics to collect…”

“The Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2000 directed the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics to collect data on deaths that occur at two stages of the criminal justice system: deaths that occur in the process of arrest and deaths that occur in jails and prisons. The provisions of that Act expired in 2006. H.R. 2189 reauthorizes this data collection program. It further directs the Attorney General not only to collect the data, but also to study the data to determine how to reduce deaths in custody in the future. The bill also extends the reporting requirements to deaths that occur in Federal custody. And it ensures that those States that make a good faith effort to report this data to the Attorney General will not lose 10 percent of their Federal justice assistance funds if their data submissions are untimely. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that between 2001 and 2006 there were over 18,000 state prisoner deaths. There were an additional 7,000 local prisoner deaths between 2000 and 2006. {time} 1420 More than nine out of every 10 State prisoner deaths were the result of illness or suicide, and eight out of 10 deaths at the local jail level were from those same causes. Although illness-related deaths have increased slightly in recent years, the homicide and suicide rates in the State prisons have dramatically decreased over the last 25 years.…”