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 Fiscal Years (FYs) 2016 and 2017, and has collected data for FYs 2018–2022. This comprehensive data collection is 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 continue to work closely with BJS to (1) understand and meet BJS’s needs related to FDCRP; (2) develop and maintain a frame of federal law enforcement 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.
