Federal Law Enforcement Agency Deaths in Custody Reporting Program, FY24-26

The Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) of 2013 (P.L. 113–242) requires the head of each federal law enforcement agency to submit a report that contains information regarding the death of any person while that person is detained, under arrest, or in the process of being arrested by federal law enforcement officers or while in their custody. As delegated by the Attorney General, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) designed the Federal Law Enforcement Agency Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (FDCRP) in response to DCRA. This program furthers BJS’s mission to produce reliable, valid national statistics on the criminal justice system along with innovative strategies and approaches to address the challenges that arise from reporting arrest-, detention-, or incarceration-related deaths.

This comprehensive data collection is designed to meet both the BJS mission of collecting, analyzing, publishing, and disseminating information on crime and criminal justice topics and the reporting requirement set forth in DCRA.

RTI International collaborated with BJS to develop the FDCRP pilot study and tested the data collection program for fiscal years (FYs) 2016 and 2017. RTI built on the success of the pilot study to administer the FDCRP FY18–23, which included maintaining a universe of federal law enforcement agencies, collecting data on in-custody deaths from federal law enforcement agencies for FYs 2018–2023, and preparing analysis files for BJS.

Under this cooperative agreement, RTI will continue to work closely with BJS to (1) collect complete and accurate information on all federal arrest-, detention-, or incarceration-related deaths for FY24–26; (2) implement a consistent data collection program across all federal law enforcement agencies; and (3) increase the efficiency and timeliness of collecting, analyzing, and disseminating the data. To achieve the program goals, RTI will develop and maintain a federal law enforcement agency database; collect high-quality death in custody data from federal law enforcement agencies via a secure, user-friendly web-based data collection tool and robust data quality follow-up efforts; provide BJS with timely reports during and after data collection to monitor the status of submissions and follow-up efforts; and prepare datasets and associated documentation for analysis and archiving.