Death in custody : how America ignores the truth and what we can do about it / Roger A. Mitchell Jr., MD and Jay D. Aronson, PhD.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mitchell, Roger, 1974- author.

Aronson, Jay D., 1974- author.

Series:

Health equity in America

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Police brutality--United States.

Police brutality.

Arrest--United States.

Arrest.

Arrest (Police methods).

Prisoners--United States--Death.

Prisoners.

Prisoners--Mortality--United States.

Prisoners--Death.

Prisoners--Mortality.

United States.

Physical Description:

xvi, 312 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023.

Summary:

"This work focuses on the stories of several individuals who died while in custody to illustrate the long history of policy and practice that at best provides toothless regulation (often unfunded, or without accountable parties), and at worst is officially dismissive of the human lives lost, deliberately making it harder to get to the truth. The authors also tell the stories of activists and journalists, who have often been the ones making the greatest effort to uncover the true scope of deaths in custody"-- Provided by publisher.

"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 solution: 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"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

Lynching

Early Advocacy against Police Killings

The Death in Custody Reporting Act

Before Sandra Bland: Custodial Deaths in Texas

Mortality Behind Bars: Documenting Deaths in Prisons, Jails, and Detention Centers

Homicide: Death at the Hands of Another

The Checkbox and Beyond.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781421447087

1421447088

OCLC:

1381464470