Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do about It

by Roger A. Mitchell Jr., Jay D. Aronson

The United States significantly undercounts the number of people who die in law enforcement custody each year. How can we fix this? Deaths resulting from interactions with the US criminal legal system are a public health emergency, but the scope of this issue is intentionally ignored by the very systems that are supposed to be tracking these fatalities. We don't know how many people die in custody each year, whether in an encounter with police on the street, during transport, or while in jails, prisons, or detention centers. In order to make a real difference and address this human rights problem, researchers and policy makers need reliable data. In Death in Custody, Roger A. Mitchell Jr., MD, and Jay D. Aronson, PhD, share the stories of individuals who died in custody and chronicle the efforts of activists and journalists to uncover the true scope of deaths in custody. From Ida B. Wells's enumeration of extrajudicial lynchings more than a century ago to the Washington Post 's current effort to count police shootings, the work of journalists and independent groups has always been more reliable than the state's official reports. Through historical analysis, Mitchell and Aronson demonstrate how government at all levels has intentionally avoided reporting death in custody data. Mitchell and Aronson outline a practical, achievable system for accurately recording and investigating these deaths. They argue for a straightforward public health adding a simple checkbox to the US Standard Death Certificate that would create an objective way of recording whether a death occurred in custody. They also propose the development of national standards for investigating deaths in custody and the creation of independent regional and federal custodial death review panels. These tangible solutions would allow us to see the full scope of the problem and give us the chance to truly address it.

328 pages, Hardcover

Published September 5, 2023

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite excellent! Especially the last 1/3rd of the book!

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Americans, we count ourselves morally superior to countries who commit human rights abuses and war crimes. Yet the frequency of police killings of unarmed African Americans led the authors to question how often this abuse happens. Unfortunately, the answers are difficult, if not impossible to find. Deaths occurring in police pursuit, during arrests, police transit, and in jail are not systematically reported. The authors clearly state that they don’t mean to vilify law enforcement, but rather to account for and reduce these deaths.
Death in Custody traces the history of racism in law enforcement through the post-Civil War practice of leasing out convicts for enforced labor. The authors also link the history of death in custody to the widespread lynching in the South and across the country, a practice that long terrorized Black men and women.
Mitchell and Aronson humanize their account with stories of people’s lives affected by deaths in police custody. We’ve seen so many stories on the news, and heard so many names chanted: Amadou Diallo, Earl Faison, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor. With this book, Mitchell and Aronson seek to elevate their lives and empower their families by asking for a fair count of everyone who died in custody, and a fair chance for those who might be next.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Death in Custody is an research project into the deceptively complex question: how many people in America die in custody? It's the kind of book that stumps the authors and raises more questions than answers. If you want a quick answer, it's not here. Instead, this book demonstrates a pattern out of singular deaths across the entire US: when people die in jail, or from jail, the public may not ever know.

The book wanders at times, you may find yourself wondering why we're suddenly talking about football players or going on a tangent about Ida B. Wells. However, they all tie back to the central premise and illuminates the problem. One of the main takeaways I got from this book is that this is a complex problem that doesn't exist in a vacuum, but in concert with other societal issues, and arising directly from its historical context. Calling them "tangents" doesn't give enough credit to the authors for their research, because it always ties back to the scope of the book.

There's also a charming dynamic between the two authors. One is a medical examiner, the other is a human rights researcher, and both have a very strong writing voice. The book will recount the story of a death in custody, moving back and forth between the precise narration of an autopsy and the broad lens of history to put the medical conclusions into proper context. This micro-macro analysis helps the reader understand the aggravating factors of each incident, then tie them all together as a phenomenon.

This book is a tough read at times because it is at its core a story of heartbreak and suffering. There is also no satisfying closure. The authors' core recommendation (creating a checkbox on death certificates for deaths in custody, similar to smoking and pregnancy) is well thought out and grounded in factual basis, but they admit that it is step one of many on the road to saving lives. There are no quick fixes or "one neat trick". But this is a necessary book, and an important addition to the public health field.

I had the good fortune to attend a book talk, and Dr. Aronsen said "this is done in [his] name" which is true. Incarceration and brutality are done in his name, and mine, and yours. The least we can do is understand the problem and start collecting data.

[Alan Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can easily Google the number of people who die as a result of car crashes, heart attacks, infant mortality, and maternal mortality. You would think that the answer to how many people in the US die in custody each year would be just as easy to find. You would be wrong.

Death in Custody traces the historical roots of the country's failure to account for in custody deaths back to lynchings in the late 1800's through the 1940's (highlighting Ida B Welles heroic efforts to provide an accurate count), through events as recent as Sandra Bland's death in a Texas jail following a routine traffic stop. The bottom line is that while there have been many efforts to improve the way we track deaths in custody, the political will to effectively do so has never existed, so it has never happened (despite a federal law requiring that every jurisdiction in the US do so).

In addition to the failure to do something as simple as count deaths, the authors spend a lot of time exposing the failure to investigate most deaths in custody, such that we have no clue why most people who die in custody do so (bad medical care, pre-existing conditions, use of force, etc.)

The authors conclude with a simple first step: add a check box to the standard death certificate indicating whether the decedent was in custody. The authors admit that this would not be a complete solution to understanding, and ultimately reducing, these deaths, but no solution is possible without accurate records.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

audiobook- tons of essential information in this book people need to read