Improving DCRA Transparency Through Public Data Tables

GABRIELA CASTELLANOS: Good afternoon, everyone. We're going to get started in about 30 seconds. For those of you who are coming in just now, welcome to the BJA Death in Custody Reporting Act Data Transparency and Accessibility webinar. Excuse me. We will begin the session right now. 

Welcome. Today, like I said, this is the DCRA Data Transparency and Accessibility webinar. My name is Gabriela Castellanos, and I am the training and technical assistance specialist on the BJA planning performance and impact team. We are happy that you have joined us today and excited to present this information. 

But a few quick notes. For any technical issues that you may have, please contact my colleague, Angela Beebe. You can do so by sending a private message via chat or by sending a message to all panelists via the chat function, or sending an email to, again, to my colleague Angela Beebe, mentioned below. 

For your awareness, this session is being recorded and will be posted on the BJA YouTube and BJA multimedia pages. We encourage you to use the Q&A function in the WebEx to ask questions as they arise throughout the presentation. However, we have reserved time at the end of the session, so please use the Q&A function at the bottom right-hand side of the screen. For more complex questions or those that require additional explanation, we will — please leave your email and we will contact you after this session. 

Otherwise, the chat box will be used by panelists to share links and resources with participants. With those announcements out of the way, I will now hand it over to Deputy Director for Programs Michelle Garcia to begin this session. Go ahead, Michelle. 

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thank you so much, Gabriela, and thank you to everyone who is joining us this afternoon. Next slide, please. 

This afternoon you have an opportunity to hear from a few of the BJA team who is working on DCRA. Next slide. 

We'll start by providing a little bit of a background for those who may be less familiar with the Death in Custody Reporting Act, then discuss our commitment to improving data quality and transparency. We will demonstrate the data tables that we will be releasing. And then lastly, we've built in a significant amount of time to answer any questions that you might have. Next slide. 

And with that, I'd like to invite our director, Karhlton Moore, to provide some opening remarks. Karhlton. 

KARHLTON MOORE: Hey, thank you so much, Michelle, and let me thank each and every one of you for joining us here today to talk about something that is so incredibly important to those of us at BJA, OJP, and DOJ as a whole. And please know that this is a priority to all of us, and I know it's important to each and every one of you as well. 

Since coming to BJA, we have made this a priority and we have demonstrated that by really trying to invest in getting this work done. We've done it by investing in people. You'll hear from Jimmy — if you don't already know Jimmy, Jimmy is focused full-time on DCRA. He wakes up thinking about DCRA. He goes to bed thinking about DCRA — I don't know if he actually does that. But during the day, his job is to focus on DCRA and to support you in your efforts to get the information to us at BJA. And certainly Michelle, who you just heard from, and you'll have a chance to hear from again. 

The one thing I want to point out about myself, Michelle, and Jimmy, is that we all work in SAA offices, so we all understand the importance of this work and we understand the unique challenges that SAA offices have in gathering this work. That's one of the reasons why we've invested in TTA, so training and technical assistance, to assist you in your efforts, in all of your collection efforts, and our great partners JIRN, who are joining us, obviously, today. 

I know each and every one of you has a lot of responsibilities and you have a lot of issues going on in your state that have absolutely nothing to do with DCRA. And I know you have a lot going on with us that has nothing to do with DCRA, but I would just urge you to look at this not as a process that you have to engage in or information that you have to run down, but one of the most important things that you'll ever be a part of: trying to figure out how we save lives. And that is what is truly behind our work around DCRA. It is all about saving lives. 

So I would urge you — take advantage of the opportunity to ask questions, to share information with your counterparts from across the country. If you have a question, please don't be shy. I know most SAA staff and leaders are not shy. But take the time today to ask questions. I'm sure that you have colleagues who have very similar questions, so we'll be doing yourself a favor and them a favor as well. Again, we look forward to working with you and if there are other resources you need, I would just urge you to let us know. Now I'll turn it back to Michelle. 

GARCIA: Thank you so much, Karhlton. Next slide, please. 

While I imagine most of you are familiar with BJA, in case someone may not be, we are actually celebrating our 40th anniversary this year. We were established in 1984 to reduce violent crime, create safer communities, and reform our nation's criminal justice system. And since fiscal year 2020, this has involved work around the Death in Custody Reporting Act. Next slide. 

And as Karhlton mentioned, this is not simply a data collection exercise. This is about reducing and preventing deaths in custody. And so all of the work that you have been doing is about advancing that goal around improving our understanding of why deaths are occurring in custody with the hope of preventing future deaths. 

I want to thank all of you and the work that your teams have done over the past several years to collect and report DCRA data to BJA. I want you to know that we have seen such a tremendous improvement in the data and the quality of the data that has been collected over the past several years. So, a great thanks to you and your teams for all of the efforts that you have put into that. We know that it has taken strides, investments of personnel, relationship building, finding solutions when you've run into challenges, and we know many of you are still having challenges. So, I will reiterate what Karhlton said. We have support and resources available to you both through our team here at BJA and through JIRN, which operates our DCRA Training and Technical Assistance Center. 

We're excited that at this point, we have data from all of your states that we can begin to start publishing in order to try and shed light, and again, ultimately reduce and prevent deaths in custody. And so we want to focus today on the data that we've collected and how we'll be moving to putting that data out and making it available to the public. With that, I will turn it over to Jimmy. 

JAMES STEYEE: Here I am. Thank you, Michelle. And just wanted to address, yes, Karhlton, I go to bed thinking about this, I wake up thinking about this, and I dream about deaths in custody. So, eat, sleep, dream about it. But thank you for your comments and appreciate it and thank you Michelle, for keeping this discussion up. 

As a quick reminder, we definitely want to hear from you today, so please leave your comments and questions, concerns in the chat and Q&A feature during this webinar. We'll address those at the end as best we can. In the next few slides, we're going to talk about BJA's commitment to transparency and communicating with stakeholders about the good work that you all are doing. Since FY 2020 when data collection began, many states have made great strides in their reporting, so we are confident now that we are ready to start releasing national-level data at this time. Next slide, please. 

In 2023, BJA released a report to the Senate Committee on Appropriations describing our efforts —excuse me, OJP released the report — our efforts describing the DCRA program. In the report, OJP and BJA made a commitment to improve the quality and transparency of the DCRA data. As part of that report, we described efforts we are undertaking to improve the quality of our data. The first step in that plan was to require and publish state level DCRA implementation plans, which are now on the BJA website that you all submitted as part of your JAG applications last year. As a reminder, updates to those implementation plans, or implementation reports based on those date plans, are required in the FY 2024 JAG application. 

In 2016, the DOJ made a commitment to publicly release data pursuant to the DCRA. OJP assessed that plan and the transparency options given the applicable privacy and confidentiality laws. We now feel confident that given the protections we have put in place, we can release national-level aggregate data while moving towards state-level aggregate data in the near future. Next slide, please. 

So, we have a poll question for you all. We'll put the poll up and leave it open for about 30 seconds or so. With this poll question, we want to know if your state publishes DRCA data or use of force data, data that is collected as part of a state law, and if that is posted publicly on a state-level website. So, the poll question is simply, does your state publish DCRA data on a public website? We'll leave it open for a little bit and we'll see what the results are. 

We'll give it another five more seconds. It looks like nearly half say yes, they've finished and are — have published. Excuse me, I'm reading the wrong slide. So about 16 percent has said yes, and then about 31 percent has said no, and then 5 percent said no, but we plan to. So roughly 21 percent are somewhere in the yes or yes, but we plan to, or no, but we plan to, so I appreciate that. That's good information for us to have, and you know, in the near future, we'll point to that from our resources on the BJA website. So, we'll appreciate that. Next slide, please. 

So now let's talk about our data release plan. Our first step, obviously, which we have done, was to give advance notice to you all about our plan to release aggregate national-level data and in the future to release state-level data. Between the email that went out already and this webinar, including giving you time afterwards to follow up with us, we want to hear your feedback. We want to hear your concerns and thoughts and ideas, including information about tools that might be helpful to you all to either use our website, point to it, or to make it more helpful to you all in your states. 

That all being said, in October 2024, we will plan to publish this data on the BJA website at the national aggregate level. And then later on in the presentation, we'll give you a preview of what those tables look like using some test data, so it's not live data at this time. Later this winter, we will continue to work with you all, including those states that we have already met in the last couple of weeks, to continue to improve the completeness of your data. Data will be refreshed on a periodic basis as we continue to get new and revised information. Further, new fiscal years of data will be added on an annual basis. The current draft of the tables will include FY 2020 through FY 2023 data. And in January 2025, we will refresh the data tables and release aggregate state level data tables. Next slide, please. 

The initial release will include data from FY 2020 through FY 2023, as already noted. FY 2024 will be added around Q2 of 2025 once it is verified and cleaned. The initial release will also include a demographics dashboard. Users will be able to filter by location type and manner of death so that they can narrow — so that users can narrow the data tables down to what they're interested in looking at, such as deaths from prison, by manner of death, or other examples. The website will include definitions and the requisite disclaimers, which we'll get into a little bit. 

To protect confidentiality, cell sizes of less than five will be hidden. BJA is not representing these data as complete or as official government statistics, so we're acknowledging there are some data gaps. BJA has had to clean a small number of records. For example, arrest-related deaths reported to us as executions. Look for some outreach for us on those. Users will not be able to export or view the source data. Next slide, please. 

As noted, the disclaimers will appear below the tables to indicate that the data had been masked. I should note that the death-occurring juvenile facilities have been removed and will not be included in the data tables. Again, BJA is not representing this data as complete and comprehensive or as official federal statistics. State-level comparisons will also be discouraged once we get to that point. Next slide, please. 

This slide gives a few examples of definitions that will be on the public website, on the BJA website. And in the following slides, we'll demo the functionality of the data tables. I do want to point out to the unknown, kind of catchall definition here — there are a number of records that have been provided to us where the location type is unknown to us, unclear based off the description, unknown based off of the descriptions given to us, so that will also be included in the tables. Next slide, please. 

This first table shows total deaths by location type and fiscal year. The different location types are prisons; state/local law enforcement; unknown, which refers to the previous slide and the description of that is on that previous slide; community corrections; and jails. In the dropdown menu, you can filter by manner of death including use of force, execution, accident, natural causes, et cetera. So, this slide has a video showing you the functionality in action, so you can go ahead and play the video, Gabriela. 

CASTELLANOS: All right, it doesn't seem like I can play that video at this moment. 

STEYEE: Okay. All right, well, let's go to the next slide, please. And we'll work on that in the interim. 

Slide 19 here, the second table is manner of death by fiscal year. This table is the — kind of reverse of the previous table but allows users to more easily look at the manner of death within and across facility types. We'll see if that table can be played. If not, we'll move on. Notice that as filters are selected, or as filters are selected, you can see the video, the values in the tables will change. And then as noted before, if a series of filters are selected that result in a value of less than five, the cell sizes will be hidden and appear as blank. Next slide, please. 

So lastly, this table shows the demographic characteristics of decedents. You can filter by location type in this view. The demographic characteristics include race, ethnicity, age range, which has been extrapolated from the year of birth field, and gender. Again, as you select the different filters for location type, values will change across all of the demographic characteristics. And again, cell sizes of less than five, to protect confidentiality, will be hidden. Next slide, please. 

So now, I'm going to turn it over to Alexa from the TTA Center at JIRN and she'll talk about the TTA opportunities. Thank you. 

ALEXA SINGER: Hi, everyone. I know that I have met a lot of you, but if I haven't had a chance to yet, my name is Alexa Singer, and I'm a research associate at the Justice Information Resource Network, or JIRN. JIRN is a national nonprofit that serves as a resource for practitioners, researchers, analysts, journalists, SAAs, and we serve as the training and technical assistant provider for BJA's DCRA program like Jimmy, Michelle, and Karhlton all mentioned. 

So, to give you a little bit of an idea of what we can do for you, as this national level data is released, we can help in a number of different ways. So, we provide no-cost, so it's totally free to you, virtual or in-person technical assistance. We also have some web-based resources. We're expanding that collection pretty regularly, but what's there is potentially helpful for your needs as this data is released. We can also answer any questions that you might have about these data transparency initiatives that Jimmy and Michelle have been discussing today. 

So, we are able to help with, and have been helping a lot of you with, finding ways to supplement direct reporting. We have shared some successful reporting strategies that we have learned over the last year, so if we hear something from one state that seems to be working really well, we try to share that out with other states. We can help with developing reporting compliance measures to make sure your state is carrying out your implementation plan as well as possible. We can help with writing the implementation plans, and many of you have taken advantage of those things that we offer so far. 

So, what I want to highlight today is that we are now able to offer assistance with fielding inquiries about this data release. You may receive requests from the media or the general public as this information becomes available, and if there's any way that we can help you with brainstorming ways to respond to these, we are available. So, the next slide, if we want to go to the next slide, the next slide has our contact information, and email is the best way to reach out to us. 

So, in addition to meeting with us for TTA, we have, like I mentioned, a pre-existing collection of DCRA resources on our website, and those are available if you scan that QR code there. It'll link to those directly. These resources might help with this new DRCA data transparency initiative and it includes links to past state DRCA reports and provides ideas for improving your own state's compliance. And there are also some contact lists and directories. We have found that it is helpful to make connections with other states to sort of learn how they are doing things, and those contacts and directories serve as a good starting point for that. So, if you would like to set up a time to meet with us, if you email that email address there at the bottom right, we will be in touch with you pretty quickly and we can set up a call and discuss your state's individual needs. So, I guess I will pass it back to you, Jimmy. 

STEYEE: All right, thank you so much. So, I'm noticing there's a few comments in the chat already, so we'll address those here in a little bit, and I appreciate that. So, stay connected to us. We'll have some of these slides posted, or excuse me, this training posted on a YouTube page. We have some other DCRA resources on the YouTube page. And just from a general sense, if you're looking for funding opportunities, et cetera, training opportunities, those will be posted on BJA's socials. So, next slide, please. 

To contact us, get ahold of me, Michelle, and Alexa, the DCRA@JIRN email address goes directly to her. And let us know if you need anything. If you're looking for any resources, we're happy to help review. As I said before, if you have any concerns, let us know, please. Next slide, please.

All right, we are going to try to address our technical difficulty here. So, Gabriela, if you can stop sharing the slides, we are going to try to pull up the videos here to show the tables in action here. All right, so here we have the demographic dashboard. If you can go ahead and play it, Brooks, we'll show that. 

As you can see, you can drop down the location type. You'll have community corrections, jail, prison, unknown. Notice juvenile has been taken off. We don't quite have enough data to be showing that yet, so that's not an option in the current dashboards. All right, so here's the next one. Deaths by location type and fiscal year. So again, you can select different manners of death, so if you want to do that across different location types, you can do so by selecting the filters and it will populate, of course, different values across the fiscal years. And then of course the last one, manner of death by fiscal year. So, this is just the inverse of what we had before, but if you're more interested in manner of death within certain facility types or arrest-related death, you can select the various different filters. And as noted before, you know, that was test data, so nothing in there is actual live data. And you know, there are some things that have been masked to protect confidentiality. 

So, thank you for that, and Gabriela, if you want to pull the Q&A slide back up, we'll move into any questions or comments that you all have. A couple that I saw in the chat that I just want to address right offhand is there's a question about race and ethnicity, that this seems to be [an] actual issue, longstanding issue, among a number of states that we've talked to. And we recognize that a lot of systems, a lot of facilities do not collect ethnicity separate from race. And that there is a new OMB directive out directing the federal government to change in some ways the way race and ethnicity information is collected. When we get to the point of revising the death in custody form, which we don't take lightly, we don't want to change a bunch of things for you unless we do it in a way that's very systematic, we will address that issue and we will follow the OMB directive. So yes, we're aware of it. Yes, there are plans to move toward a different way of collecting race and ethnicity information. And that will occur in the, I don't want to say near future, but in the future. So, thank you for that. 

That and the other one I want to mention, Ross from, is it North Carolina or South Carolina? I do apologize. It's a Carolina. He is offering a death in custody database to anyone that would like, you could use to track your information. So, I think that would be a good opportunity if you're looking for some kind of electronic ways to track your records. Ross is saying that he will provide that. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Gabriela if there's other questions that have come up or comments. 

CASTELLANOS: We have one that just came in. It says for now, how should we classify that the race data specifically, whenever we do have discrepancies on ethnicity from our collecting agencies? 

STEYEE: I mean, I think we need to have a further conversation. Generally speaking, what we see is that, you know, if Hispanic ethnicity is selected, what we see in race is unknown. I mean, I think that's generally fine. If that's the case, kind of let us know that's what's happening. You know, oftentimes we might see White unknown, or excuse me, White race and then ethnic Hispanic also selected, so there's different ways of going about it. But for now, I think unknown is probably an okay race value if that's the case. 

CASTELLANOS: Ronald had that it may already been in the PowerPoint, but when will the dashboard be live? 

STEYEE: So, the plan is to get them up in October. We're shooting for the end of this month, but October is our kind of planned month for release. 

CASTELLANOS: That seems to be all the questions at this point. 

STEYEE: All right, well we will leave it open for another 5 minutes or so. One more. 

CASTELLANOS: Yeah, Mary said, just to confirm, this will aggregate data, correct? 

STEYEE: That is correct. This will be aggregate-level data and we are not allowing any of the underlying data to be exported or viewed on the website. 

CASTELLANOS: Okay. Brandon just typed in that the October data refers to the 2023 aggregate data, correct? 

STEYEE: That is correct. It is through FY 2023. So, there are a few of you that may be back reporting, you know, 2021, 2022 data that hadn't already been submitted. That will not be captured in this first release, but it will be in the next release. But it is dated through FY '23 as of now. In Q2, early Q2 of '25, that is when we'll release the '24 data. 

CASTELLANOS: When is the deadline to submit retroactive data? 

STEYEE: So, there's a couple different ways to answer this question. The first is we don't have a deadline, or we have not closed out any fiscal years of data or submissions to this point. So, it's, you know, a constant, live and changing database. At some point, we will think about closing fiscal '20 and fiscal 2021. We're not quite there yet. So, from that sense, there is not a definitive deadline. But I think, Christina, what you're really asking is, what's the deadline for making sure that your most complete and accurate records get posted on the website? So, as of right now, we're going with what has already been submitted for the first release. The next deadline for the next update to the website will be in the January timeline. Hopefully I answered your question. 

Any other questions? We are open for another couple minutes.

CASTELLANOS: Kelsey says, will the states eventually be required to have their information posted publicly? 

STEYEE: So, not from the perspective of, the states have to do it themselves. You know, we can't or we won't be requiring that of you. What we will be doing is taking what you give us at some point and posting the aggregate-level information in 2025. So, state level, I believe you're Wyoming, is that right? You know, that data will be available on the BJA website. But no, you do not need to post your information on a Wyoming government website. 

GARCIA: Jimmy, while we're waiting to see if there may be any additional questions, you started out with the poll to see how many people, how many states already published their DCRA data and several states indicated they did. Do we have the list of states that have public-facing websites with their DCRA data that we could share in case states would like to see what other states are doing? 

STEYEE: Yes. Thank you, Michelle. We have started compiling a list and I would say we have maybe 15 or so public websites identified. Alexa is going to be reaching out in the coming days to week to see which ones we've missed. So, you know, if you answered yes to that poll, expect an email. If you've answered no to that poll, you may also expect an email. But also, if you are interested in, you know, seeing what platforms other states are using, like to see what they're doing, reach out. Let us know, we can share that. But also, as part of our transparency initiative, we are planning to have a webpage dedicated to providing a link to every state's public website. So, if you have a website that, you know, shows DCRA data or have a website that talks about your procedures around DCRA, we will provide a link to that. And Ross, thank you for providing an example of your dashboard that's already linked. 

Janice from Montana, you are welcome. I completely understand. 

GARCIA: Thanks, Jimmy. 

STEYEE: Yep. All right, I'll just say a few more things. We'll leave it open for another minute or so. Please feel free. We have plenty of time, so as I'm speaking, if you have other things, please put them in the chat. 

But just to add a couple of minor things, thank you for joining us. Again, thank you for your time and thank you for your efforts. I recognize — fully recognize this is not easy. If you need anything, please, please, please reach out. If you have concerns with this, also please reach out. We will do our best to alleviate any of those concerns. If there's things that we are not thinking of, we also need to know. So, we want to make sure that we're doing the best we can to be transparent about what we're providing. But also, you know, as we're getting questions from other stakeholders, we can describe exactly what it is that we're getting from you all so that we're not misrepresenting the information. So, please reach out if you have any concerns. Happy to have some further discussions. 

So, with that, we will leave it open for another 30 seconds or so. Wait to see if we get anything else. But again, thank you for your time and enjoy the rest of your afternoon.