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Federal Law Enforcement Agency Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (FDCRP), 2018-2021

Award Information

Awardee
RESEARCH TRIANGLE INSTITUTE
Award #
2018-85-CX-K030
Funding Category
Competitive Discretionary
Location

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC

Congressional District
4
Status
Open
Funding First Awarded
2018
Total funding (to date)
$544,192
Original Solicitation
Federal Law Enforcement Agency Deaths in Custody Reporting Program, 2018-2021

Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2018, $499,192)

The Death in Custody Reporting Act (DICRA) 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 DICRA. This program furthers the department’s mission by working in partnership with the justice community to identify the unique challenges faced by federal law enforcement agencies, along with innovative strategies and approaches to address the challenges that arise from reporting arrest-, detention-, or incarceration-related deaths.

RTI International collaborated with BJS to develop the FDCRP pilot study and tested the data collection program for FYs 2016 and 2017. Building on our previous work, the proposed FDCRP FY2018–2021 will deliver a comprehensive data collection designed to meet both the BJS legislative mandate to collect statistical information on the criminal justice system and the reporting requirement set forth in DICRA.

Under this cooperative agreement, RTI will work closely with BJS to (1) understand and meet BJS’s needs; (2) develop and maintain a frame of federal LE agencies; (3) conduct annual data collections to enumerate the number of federal agencies in the United States with law enforcement, detention, or incarceration functions and the number of deaths in custody, and to describe the characteristics of decedents and the circumstances surrounding the deaths; (4) minimize burden on respondents while providing BJS ready access to data collection status and customized reports; (5) meet all established timelines; (6) regularly assess the quality and completeness of the data collection; and (7) deliver accurate, fully processed annual data sets and associated documentation and analyses.

CA/NCF

Date Created: September 20, 2018