ATLANTA – Georgia’s two U.S. senators launched an inquiry Thursday aimed at strengthening tracking and data collection about deaths of inmates in federal, state, and local custody.
Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, are asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to improve reporting practices under a law that requires the Justice Department to collect data from states and localities about the deaths of inmates in their custody to help identify potential violations of civil or human rights.
Ossoff, chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led a 10-month investigation in 2022 that found the Justice Department failed to count nearly 1,000 deaths of inmates in state or local custody in 2021, despite those deaths being publicly reported elsewhere.
“In prior outreach, we have urged the Department of Justice to investigate ongoing disturbing reports of deaths in custody in Georgia’s Clayton County and Fulton County jails,” the senators wrote in a letter to Merrick.
“Tragically, deaths have continued. In just the first six months of 2024, at least six individuals have died in custody in Clayton County Jail. Another three have died in Fulton County Jail this year, following the deaths of 10 individuals in custody in Fulton County in 2023. These alarming numbers underscore the necessity of stronger reporting … to help identify the causes of these deaths and possible interventions to prevent future tragedies.”
Earlier this year, a report from National Public Radio (NPR) found some deaths classified as “natural” may trace back to factors such as inadequate medical treatment, neglect, or poor living conditions.
However, according to Justice Department documents, reporting forms do not call for information about medical treatment or other factors that could shed more light on the causes of “natural” deaths, making it harder to determine the scope of the problem.
In 2022, Congress passed bipartisan legislation Ossoff introduced requiring the Federal Bureau of Prisons to upgrade prison camera systems to provide secure storage, logging, preservation, and accessibility of recordings for future investigators pursuing allegations of misconduct, abuse, or other criminal activity in prisons.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill last month providing independent oversight of the prison agency.