'You have utterly failed.' The Justice Department undercounted nearly 1,000 deaths in prisons, jails, or during arrests during the last fiscal year
, jails, or during arrests during the last fiscal year, according to the results of a nearly year-long bipartisan investigation.
“We believe that gathering data on deaths in custody is a noble and necessary step towards a transparent and legitimate justice system,” Maureen Henneberg, the DOJ official leading the accounting of deaths in custody, told Senators at the hearing. “As I know this committee appreciates, it is a major undertaking to gather this information from 56 states and territories, who in turn rely on reports from thousands of prisons, local jails, and law enforcement agencies.
“I lost all my voicemails from him,” Maley said, “so the shock of listening to his voice again, in the worst way possible, is just too much.”DOJ argues that the gaps occurred because of changes to the reporting process within the past decade. DCRA was first passed in 2000, and was later reauthorized in 2013 with additional provisions. The Bureau of Justice Statistics was previously tasked with compiling this data, and did so successfully in reports that were released to the public.