For the past 13 years at an unknown cost to taxpayers a federal program has failed to accurately track the number of Americans who die each year at the hands of law enforcement.
The Arrest Related Death program, by the Justice Department’s own admission, has failed to account for as much as half of law enforcement homicides annually, according to an internal report released last year and never previously reported until now.
In 2003, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, a division of the Justice Department, started the ARD program in response the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2000. States are required to submit data to the program, which must include information about each death such as name, age, race, sex, and the circumstances of death.
Several states and the District of Columbia have not reported any data on arrest-related deaths despite being required to do so by law. According to the Justice Department, from 2003 to 2011, Arkansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Wyoming have, in several of those years, not reported to the program. Georgia has never reported to the program (PDF).
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The list of states that haven't been reporting speaks volumes.