The Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program is a national collection of persons who die in the custody of, or shortly after restraint by, state or local law enforcement personnel.  The ARD program includes the deaths of persons attempting to elude law enforcement during the course of apprehension.  For the purposes of the ARD program, an “arrest-related” death is one that occurs anytime a person’s freedom to leave is restricted, including instances where death occurred before physical custody was established or a formal arrest process was initiated.

Deaths are reportable to the program without considering whether law enforcement personnel caused the death.  All deaths caused by any use of force by state or local law enforcement personnel are reportable to the program, as well as deaths occurring in the presence of law enforcement and attributed to suicide, intoxication, accidental injury, or natural causes.

Defining deaths in the process of arrest
The Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program was initiated in order to comply with requirements set forth in The Deaths in Custody Reporting Act of 2000 (DICRA), Public Law 106-297.  The DICRA legislation required the U.S. Department of Justice to begin a quarterly collection of individual death records for all persons incarcerated in local jails, state prison, juvenile correctional facilities, as well as “any person who is in the process of arrest.”  As the statistical agency for the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) implemented the ARD data collection in 2003.

Although the DICRA legislation mandated that all in-custody deaths be counted, the legislation did not specify the meaning of the phrase, “in the process of arrest.”  BJS staff consulted with the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the National Sheriff’s Association (NSA), and criminal justice researchers to identify which circumstances involved an arrest process.

BJS defines “in the process of arrest” to include all circumstances in which a person is in the custody, or under the restraint, of state or local law enforcement personnel.  An arrest process includes instances in which law enforcement personnel actively pursues or attempts to apprehend a criminal suspect, regardless of whether physical custody was established.  In addition, this definition is inclusive of situations in which a formal arrest process was neither initiated nor intended, such as deaths that involved law enforcement assistance in the restraint and transport of individuals in need of medical or mental health care.

Program Exclusions
The deaths of innocent bystanders, hostages, and law enforcement personnel were excluded from the scope of the ARD program.  In addition, all deaths occurring in a jail or other long-term holding facility, state prison, or juvenile correctional facility were excluded from the ARD data collection.  Deaths occurring in the custody of federal law enforcement agencies (i.e., FBI, DEA, or Marshals Service) were only reportable to the ARD program if the death, or incident causing the death, occurred in the presence of state or local law enforcement personnel.

Role of State Reporting Coordinators
Participation in the Arrest-Related Deaths program is voluntary, meaning neither law enforcement agencies nor states are required to submit ARD data to BJS.  As such, BJS relies on the assistance of State Reporting Coordinators (SRCs) to gather records on all arrest-related deaths statewide.

The role of the SRC is to identify deaths reportable to the ARD program, compile information regarding the circumstances related to the death, complete the CJ-11 and CJ-11A data collection forms, and submit the data to BJS. 

SRCs may select any methodology – or a combination of approaches – that achieves a reliable measure of arrest-related deaths.  Some of these methods included surveying all police departments in the state, surveying all county medical examiners or coroner’s offices in the state, extracting data from other collections (i.e., FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports and CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System), and conducting multi-media searches.  BJS recommends SRCs do not solely rely on a system of voluntary self-reporting by state and local law enforcement agencies.

Submitting Data
Once a reportable death is identified, the SRC obtains information about the death and completes the CJ-11 and CJ-11A data collection forms.  The CJ-11 is a quarterly summary of the number of arrest-related deaths occurring statewide.  SRCs were responsible for entering the total number of reportable deaths that occurred in each quarter of the calendar year, including a count of “zero” if no arrest-related deaths were identified.  BJS determines state participation rates in ARD through submission of these forms.    

The CJ-11A form is an incident report that is completed for each arrest-related death.  Most SRCs utilize multiple data sources to compile information required to complete the CJ-11A incident reports.  A survey of SRCs conducted in 2007 indicated that of the 47 states participating in the ARD program at some point between 2003 and 2006, 42 used multiple sources to obtain information on arrest-related deaths, while 30 states reported at least 3 different sources of data.

State and local law enforcement agencies were the most common source of data used by SRCs.  Law enforcement agencies voluntarily reported arrest-related deaths to 40 data providers.  The SRCs were asked to work with the law enforcement agency involved in the death to collect the information requested on the CJ-11A form.  SRCs may request the law enforcement agency involved complete the CJ-11A or they may gather the information and complete the form themselves.

In instances where the SRC could not obtain details of the event from the law enforcement agency involved in the death, the SRC was asked to obtain information from official source documents and complete the incident report.  Information from official source documents was obtained directly by acquiring a police report or death certificate or indirectly through oral communication, press releases from the law enforcement agency or medical office involved, legal proceedings, and other vetted sources of information.  Media accounts of the event and death were not considered sources of official information.  Subsequently, SRCs were discouraged from using media accounts of the event as their primary source of information when completing the CJ-11A form.  In the event that the SRC could not obtain information from any other source, BJS authorized the use of media accounts to supplement incomplete CJ-11A forms.

Completed CJ-11 and CJ-11A forms were submitted to BJS staff through post, fax, and email.  If a CJ-11A form was incomplete at the time of submission, BJS staff requested that the SRC follow up with the case in order to obtain missing information.  Additionally, BJS staff requested that the SRC complete a CJ-11A form for cases identified by BJS that were not included in the SRC’s original data submission.  BJS staff processed the data as they were submitted.  All data were checked for completeness and internal consistency.  BJS staff made note of items with missing responses and those that appeared to be inconsistent with other items on the form.  Upon review of the data, BJS staff contacted SRCs to acknowledge receipt of the data and request follow-up information for missing or inconsistent items.  SRCs were asked to indicate items with no additional available information.  BJS updated records as additional information was provided by SRCs. 

Data are collected on an ongoing basis throughout the calendar year and reported as annual counts.  The ARD program is a continuous data collection effort.  BJS includes all newly identified arrest-related deaths in the collection, regardless of the year the incident occurred.  In addition, BJS accepts new or updated information for cases already included in the program.

Program Coverage
When the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act of 2000 was enacted, only two states conducted a statewide count of all arrest-related deaths (California and Texas, each pursuant to State law).  In the remaining 48 states and the District of Columbia, the ARD program was the first attempt to perform a comprehensive count of all deaths occurring during the process of arrest. The attorneys general of California and Texas agreed to complete statewide reports of arrest-related deaths for submission to BJS.  In all other jurisdictions, BJS worked with state officials to determine which agency would collect arrest-related death reports.

During reporting year 2006, a state criminal justice commission, commonly administered by the governor’s office was the most common data reporting contact (22 states), followed by the state attorney general and state police department (8 states each) (see table 1).  In five states, the department of corrections took a lead role in compiling records.  In over 30 states, the reporting office also served as a state criminal justice Statistical Analysis Center (SAC).

While every state identified a data provider, three states – Georgia, Maryland, and Montana – did not submit records during the 2003-2009 collection periods.  Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia participated in the collection at some point, but the participation of some states varied by year.  Although a jurisdiction may not have participated in the ARD program in a given year, arrest-related deaths may have been identified and reported by BJS staff. 

In an effort to increase the ARD program’s national coverage, BJS began exploring the use of internet-based searches to retrospectively identify arrest-related deaths occurring from 2007 through 2009 in January of 2010.  BJS staff used “Google Alerts” to create a media search system based on 12 key terms.  In addition, BJS staff identified websites dedicated to either in-custody deaths or deaths associated with the usage of specific weapons, such as conductive energy devices.  Once an arrest-related death was identified, all available information was sent to the appropriate SRC for verification and follow-up.  The SRC was asked to complete a CJ-11A form using official source documents and then return the form to BJS.