The official failure to adequately track these deaths puts enormous burdens on families. Jacilet Griffin's son Evan Lee died in a Texas jail in 2022; ever since, she's been a warrior for her family and others facing grief and lack of answers after a loved one's death behind bars.

Interviews with dozens of people from the Justice Department, law enforcement, Congress, research groups and advocacy showed that the federal government has simply never prioritized the DCRA law enough to build a workable system to track deaths in custody.

We found hundreds of people who died in custody but weren't listed in the official data. The overwhelming majority of records didn't meet the Justice Department's standards for accuracy and completeness. Still, the DOJ has never once penalized a state for poor reporting.

One example of the problems plaguing the government's tracking of deaths in custody: an inadvertently leaked federal dataset showed that George Floyd's death—one of the most well-known cases of police use of force—is not called police use of force in the official records.