BILL NUMBER: S6693

SPONSOR: BENJAMIN
 
TITLE OF BILL:

An act to amend the public health law, in relation to including whether
an individual was in custody on the death certificate for such individ-
ual

 
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:

Requires that death certificates indicate whether a person's death
occurred while in custody.

 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section 1: Amends subdivision 1 of section 4141 of the public health
law, requiring a death certificate to include whether the decedent was
in the custody of a law enforcement officer or correctional facility at
the time of death. Adds a new subdivision 5 to section 4141 of the
public health law to require such information be included in the public-
              

ly available statistics of the NYS Department of Health.

 
JUSTIFICATION:

The 2000 Federal Death In Custody Reporting Act requires states to
report deaths of incarcerated persons to the federal government. The
Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that local jails in New
York the period 2008-2018 saw between 30 and 40 deaths per year (from
average daily populations ranging from 20,000 to 30,000).

Unfortunately, the federal statistics on prisons combine state and
federal statistics on a state by state basis. New York's prison deaths
are published as "federal and state," so we do not see separate data on
federal versus state prisons.

There appears to be no regular state level reporting in New York. The
state department of Corrections and Community Supervision's annual
profile of persons under custody, the latest of which appears from Janu-
ary 2019, does not mention deaths or mortalities. The most recent
published report on "unusual incidents" covers the 2002-2016 period.
This leaves policy makers and the general public unaware of the status
is of deaths in New York State prisons.

The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics published statistics of
Arrest-Related Deaths, but the low quality of the data led the Bureau to
cease publishing these data in 2014.

While this bill does not directly address the question of the Bureau of
Justice Services' data methodology, it would help New York State to
produce better criminal justice statistics and fill a significant gap in
the public's knowledge of its law enforcement system.

 
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

New Bill

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:

None.

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect on after ninety days.