BJA DICRA Part B OMB Responses Final 2

B. Collections of Information Employing Statistical Methods

1. Universe and Respondents Selection

The Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) is a full enumeration of deaths of any person who is detained, under arrest, or is in the process of being arrested, is en route to be incarcerated, or is incarcerated at a municipal or county jail, State prison, State-run boot camp prison, boot camp prison that is contracted out by the State, any State or local contract

facility, or other local or State correctional facility (including any juvenile facility).

The respondent universe for the prison portion of the DCRA consists of the 50 state Administering Agencies (SAA). BJA will collects administrative data directly from each of the 50 SAAs. Respondents are SAA staff from the state that has custody of the decedents.

The universe for DCRA includes approximately 6,000 reporting units nationwide could potentially report a death quarterly. This is the total estimated number of “municipal or county jail, State prison, State-run boot camp prison, boot camp prison that is contracted out by the State, any State or local contract facility, or other local or State correctional facility (including any juvenile facility” locations in the US. Local jails are accustomed to the collection and typically, can rely on their existing information systems to easily provide the data requested. Respondents are local jail staff, including sheriffs, correctional officers, or administrative personnel who provide their information to the SAAs.

2. Procedures for Information Collection

As the SAAs report quarterly to BJA on their grant awards under the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program (JAG), the DCRA collection is included in their quarterly reporting requirements pursuant to this grant program as all 56 states and territories receive funding under JAG and the DCRA penalty for non-compliance is directly applied to this funding. The SAAs are notified electronically via email from the Office of Justice Programs Grants Management System (GMS) and Performance Management Tool (PMT) when their quarterly reporting is due.

The submission of answers to the DCRA questionnaire is compulsory in PMT, and the respondents cannot submit their final quarterly reports without answering the initial DCRA question of “Was there at least one reportable death in your state during the reporting period? A reportable death refers to the death of an individual who was detained, arrested, en route to incarceration, or incarcerated in state or local facilities or a boot camp prison.” If the respondent answers in the negative, the report is complete. If the response is affirmative, the respondent is required to complete the biographical/situational information about the death.

3. Methods to Maximize Response

The response to question one within the PMT is compulsory in order for the respondent to complete their quarterly reporting for their JAG award. At a minimum the respondent SAA must answer this question in the negative to be able to complete their quarterly report. BJA will monitor all quarterly responses to ensure that they are submitted in a timely manner. Grantees will not be able to finalize quarterly reporting without completing the DCRA questions required in the PMT. If a grantee does not complete the DCRA questions, their reporting cannot be finalized and outreach by BJA will be done to ensure that the grantee understands the requirements and that they understand their responsibilities. The DCRA statute allows for the Attorney General to enforce a penalty of up to 10% of the State JAG funding for a state for non-compliance with the statute at his discretion.

4. Test of Procedures or Methods

BJA will sample on a quarterly basis the responses from random SAAs and compare them with all publicly available information available to the staff at BJA. This will include web scraping of publicly available information (to include news reports and other data about an individual state) to ascertain that all deaths that occurred in a quarter are accurately reported. Only by looking at the available data can BJA identify if a record has been excluded from a submitted report. BJA plans to start with a 10% sample of states on a quarterly basis to evaluate whether a higher or lower sample would benefit the data quality. If there is a discrepancy in the number of deaths, lack of reporting, or the information found is incomplete, BJA will reach out to the SAA to request clarification of any discrepancies in their reporting.

5. Contact Information

The BJA Programs Office has overall responsibility for the design and management of activities related to the DCRA collection. BJA oversees data collection, development of definitions and criteria for inclusion in the study, data analysis and dissemination. The primary BJA contact for the DCRA is:

Chris Casto

Bureau of Justice Assistance

810 Seventh Street NW

Washington, DC 20531

(202) 353-7193

[email protected]

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