Counting the Dead: Finding Officer-Caused Fatalities in the Official Record

• In Event: Crime and Punishment

Abstract

Over 2.6 million Americans die each year. Medical personnel determine factors contributing to death and record their determinations on death certificates, which are then gathered by states and shared with the federal government. Ultimately, the CDC shares these data and, in accordance with privacy and other federal laws, decide if, when, and how certain data will be made public. What happens when law enforcement officers take actions that result in a death? How are such deaths recorded in the U.S.? Though other researchers have used aggregated national data to estimate federal undercounts of legal intervention deaths, this paper uses a novel approach to match privately-generated and government-generated data regarding officer-involved deaths that allows analysis of cases at the individual level. My method of identifying individuals, thereby circumventing federal privacy constraints, allows me to understand how law-enforcement caused deaths are handled in the official data. Using 2000-2004 data and applying only the most conservative criteria to attribute deaths to on-duty deadly force against suspects, I estimate a government undercount of at least 47%. I also show how undercount cases are characterized in the official record. Finally, I show what the count would look like if expanded to include various death types, such as those caused by officers off-duty as well as on-duty officers whose actions contribute to, but may not solely cause, death. By showing the current limits of officer-involved death classification as well as demonstrating the implications of an expanded classification definition, I hope to prompt dialogue on the policy aims and implementation of government transparency.

Author

• Ajenai S. Clemmons, Duke University