As a law student, I worked in the legal department of the District of Columbia Department of Corrections, which defends the city against civil lawsuits when a resident of a jail is killed or seriously injured while in custody. Memories of that summer internship returned when I read Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do About It, by Roger A. Mitchell Jr. and Jay D. Aronson.
Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do About It
By Roger A. Mitchell Jr. and Jay D. Aronson
Johns Hopkins University Press, 328 pages
Publication date: September 5, 2023
Death in Custody is a radical shift in how to analyze violence, misconduct, and dysfunction in the criminal justice system in the modern era. It makes sense, considering advancements in technology and increased outrage from the public when someone dies in police custody.
While media outlets argue daily over the severity of the problem, Mitchell and Aronson have published a book that has some real answers based on science and data. Most of all, this is a call for a public health and human rights approach to the issue. As the authors note, “the American public is demanding change in the way the criminal legal system operates and accountability when law enforcement officials cause harm.”
Mitchell, a forensic pathologist, professor, and former chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia, and Aronson, a professor of science, technology, and society at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, set out immediately to make their case in the first chapter, called “Lynching.” This chapter puts a spotlight on the history of killings in custody in the United States and lynchings in general to make an important historical comparison. The country effectively legitimized mob rule during the lynching era, which has carried over to the modern era. Aronson and Mitchell note that while “we must take care when making comparisons between lynching and deaths in law enforcement custody,” the similarities are “undeniable.” African Americans, they write, consider it within the “same continuum of violence.”
Lynchings did wane as a result of fierce resistance, but other heinous acts driven by white supremacy took their place. The fact that African Americans are repeatedly murdered in police custody at a disproportionate rate is evidence of this. In the era before smartphones, there was little accountability for these incidents. But that is now changing.
“From city block to city block, jail to jail, and prison to prison, Black and poor people have died in the criminal legal system without most Americans even knowing about it. Inconsistent record keeping, intentionally limited investigation, and incomplete data have prevented the full story from coming out,” they write.
The book also points out that advocacy and activism regarding police killings of people in custody have always been present, but the problem previously was a lack of evidence. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin might not be in prison today for killing George Floyd three years ago if it weren’t for smartphones. But considering the severity of the problem, there should be even more accountability.
Death in Custody is full of stories of ordinary people bringing attention to the problem. While the heroic legacy of Ida B. Wells, who singlehandedly took on lynching with her relentless muckraking, is told, the book also contains other stories, such as the actions of the late New York City poet Louis Reyes Rivera. In 1996, Reyes Rivera challenged the Revolutionary Worker newspaper to prove that police killings of people in custody were a systemic problem and not just “a few bad apples.” Reyes Rivera’s challenge guided the work of the Stolen Lives Project, an organization dedicated to publishing data on the deaths of people in custody.
Aronson and Mitchell offer recommendations for attempting to sort out this crisis, but this book would be important even if it didn’t. Death in Custody makes the case that white supremacy, economic inequality, and exploitation are among the causes of this festering problem.