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Who Answers for a Death in Custody?
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Marshall Project
Posted: August 31st, 2025
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/08/06/harris-county-...
Each year, about 6,000 people die in prisons and jails, and another 2,000 during encounters with police, according to estimates by government agencies and nonprofit groups — numbers that experts believe are likely undercounts. Federal law has for 25 years required local agencies to report in-custody deaths, but the mandate is not enforced. In many places, there’s no reliable public accounting of what happened or why. Families who lose loved ones in custody are often met with silence or conflicting accounts. The authorities tasked with finding the truth — from jail officials to medical examiners to state investigators — often operate slowly, without coordination, or behind closed doors. Late last year, the Justice Department published aggregated totals of deaths reported between 2019 and 2023. Due to a technical glitch, The Marshall Project was able to download the full dataset — a loophole that was quickly closed. (The department has not published unredacted death in custody datasets in the past because of privacy issues and concerns about data quality.) The records we reviewed showed widespread gaps: missing causes of death, vague entries and inconsistent details from jail to jail. Those gaps make it nearly impossible to hold institutions accountable, experts say. “You can’t have that discussion without the data,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia and one of the law’s original authors. “That’s why we passed the law.”
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in policing and in the prison system.
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