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First fox: Georgia Senator John Ozoffthe Democrat detailed his recent investigation into uncounted deaths in nearly 1,000 prisons under the watch of the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Chairman Ossoff Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Inquiryspeaking with Fox News Digital in Senate Hall last week about the bipartisan investigation into the undercounted DOJ deaths “in prisons across the country.”
“What we discovered is a shocking gap in federal oversight,” Ossoff said in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital. “For example, in 2021 alone, the Justice Department failed to count nearly 1,000 deaths in prisons and prisons across the country.”
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“Many deaths in prison and custody are preventable, but only if we know who is dying, where and why,” says Ossoff. .
“My colleagues and I pledge to the United States Constitution to protect and defend the rights of all Americans, including those incarcerated,” Ossoff said. “And many of those dying are pretrial detainees.”
“They are in custody and have not yet been tried or convicted,” the Peach State senator continued.
A Georgia senator told Fox News Digital that in the course of investigating nearly 1,000 prison deaths, “more than a third of them failed to document the circumstances of their deaths.”
Ossoff said his commission took the Justice Department to a bipartisan hearing last week to “explain that prisons and prison deaths were not counted.”
“And I’ve heard some really moving testimonials from Americans who have lost loved ones in prison,” Ossoff elaborated. “People like Ms. [Belinda] His son, Matthew Laughlin, died of preventable congestive heart failure while he was innocently convicted and awaiting trial. “
“And then I played the audio of the last phone call they shared, where a young man behind bars said he was going to die, he said he was in pain,” Georgia’s The senator continued. “But his mother couldn’t help him, and he didn’t get any help while he was inside.”
“We need to understand who’s dying, why they’re dying, and where they’re dying so we can reduce custodial deaths across the country,” he added.
Osoff’s investigation spanned more than 10 months and led to hearings on the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in July of this year.Lack of consideration for human life.”
The Standing Subcommittee on Investigations cooperated with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in its investigations and found that “at least 341 missing and reportable prison deaths were disclosed on the state’s public website” by DOJ’s Department of Statistics. , was not collected”. Legal Assistance Bureau (BJA).
“At least 649 missing arrest deaths were reported in public databases maintained by nonprofit civil rights organizations but were not collected by the BJA,” the review revealed.
Under the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA), states that receive certain federal funds must disclose deaths that occur in prisons and prisons.
Nearly 1,000 uncounted deaths in prisons and detention centers occurred in 2021 alone, but an investigation found that the DOJ had not reported any prison deaths since 2019. .
The bipartisan investigation also revealed a lack of information in prison death data in recent years.
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The study found that 70% of death records for people in custody were missing at least one DCRA-required data field, and 32% were missing multiple data fields. It was also found that nearly half of the records did not detail the circumstances of their deaths.
Additionally, the report clarified that the DOJ will not complete recording the data it is required to submit to Congress until September 2024, eight years after the due date.