The permanent subcommittee on investigations will come to order. Today the subcommittee continues our bipartisan work investigating conditions in prisons, jails, and Detention Centers across the United States. I think the Ranking Member for his cooperation. In july we released findings of corruption, abuse and misconduct in the federal prison system and questioned the now former director of the federal bureau of prisons. Today after a 10 month bipartisan investigation we can reveal that despite a clear charge from congress to determine who is dying in prisons and jails across the country, where they are dying and why they are dying that abutment of justice is failing to do so. This failure undermines efforts to address the urgent humanitarian crisis ongoing behind bars across the country. Our investigation has revealed that last year alone, according to gao analysis the department of justice failed to identify at least 990 deaths in custody, nearly one thousand uncounted deaths and the true number is likely much higher. We will here today from Belinda Maley and vanessa fano whose loved ones died preventively while in custody. In both cases, sons and brothers who died, pretrial detainees having been convicted of no crime. We will hear their grief and anger. Grief and anger shared by many thousands of americans whose loved ones needlessly suffered and died while incarcerated. We will hear from professor Andrea Armstrong of Loyola University to understand failure to oversee prisons and jails, undermined american civil rights. We will hear from doctor Gretta Goodwin of the Government Accountability office, legislative Branch Agency that provides Investigator Services to congress which analyzed at my request the death in custody date of the doj collected in 2021 and will publicly report those findings for the first time. Will question the Deputy Assistant attorney general about the departments failures since the death in custody reporting act, failure that has undermined federal oversight of conditions in prisons and jails nationwide and therefore undermined americans human and Constitutional Rights. Members of congress swear to support and defend the constitution of the United States, rights of all americans in my state and every state including rights of those who are incarcerated. We are here today because what the United States is allowing to happen on our watch in prisons, jails and Detention Centers nationwide is a moral disgrace. Federal legislators serving on the nations preeminent investigative panel, it is our obligation to investigate federal governments complicity in this disgrace. It is our obligation to ask what tools the department of justice is using to protect the Constitutional Rights of the incarcerated to hold doj accountable when it fails to use those tools and to furnish better, more powerful tools with which the department can defend civil rights and civil liberties. There are bright spots. For example i was encouraged when Kristin Clark announced the doj investigation of conditions in georgias horrific state prisons one year ago today but it has become clear in the course of this investigation that the department is failing in its responsibility to implement the custody reporting act, the department is failing to determine who is dying behind bars, where they are dying and why they are dying and therefore failing to determine where and which interventions are most urgently needed to save lives. In 2,000 and again in 2014 Congress Passed the death in custody reporting act known tasking doj with custodial data nationwide. An opportunity to improve understanding of why deaths occur in custodian and develop solutions to prevent avoidable deaths. For nearly 20 years doj collected and published this data. Invaluable resource from the department for congress and the public. Then abruptly the publication stopped. And our investigation followed. We found in recent years over multiple administrations the Department Implementation of this law has failed despite clear internal warnings from dojs own Inspector General and dojs bureau of justice statistics. For example, the First Quarter of fiscal year 20 the department did not capture any state prison deaths in 11 states or jail deaths in 12 states in the district of columbia. In fiscal year 21 alone according to gao analysis the department failed to identify 1000 deaths. My assessment is the true number is likely much higher. Of those reported, 70 of the records were incomplete, 40 of records failed to capture the circumstances of death. The department of justice has failed to collect complete or accurate state and local death data for the past two years and failed to report to congress how deaths in custody can be used to save lives, a report required by law that is 6 years past due and we recently learned it is not affected to be produced for another two years. Psi investigation also found the department has no plans to make state or local death data public again despite the obvious Public Interest in this transparency. Todays hearing may dive into arcane discussions of administrative regulations or close parsing of legislative texts and those discussions are relevant. They are relevant. Of the department has concluded in 2022, twee 8 years after this law was reauthorized that it is incapable of successfully implementing it i am surely willing to work with them to help fix that but this hearing is about something more fundamental. Americans are needlessly dianes are being killed while in the custody of their own government. In our july hearing focused on the federal prison system we reveal federal pretrial detainees have been denied proper nutrition, hygiene and medical care, months of lockdowns with little or no access to the outdoors. Rats and roaches infesting them. Federal inmates killed themselves while the basic practices of Suicide Prevention wellness checks were neglected, abusive and unconstitutional practices by the federal government that likely lead to loss of life in federal facilities, was warned for years by its own investigators with corruption and misconduct in its facility and lack of regard for human life. We will hear about the experiences of americans, state and local prisons in jails, americans entitled to Constitutional Rights no matter where they are incarcerated, no matter whether they are incarcerated and we will hear about americans who died in custody many of whose deaths and causes of death are not counted by the federal government as the federal government is bound to count them. As they defend their Constitutional Rights. Before i yield to the Ranking Member, we will listen to an audio clip, with her son when jailed, pretrial detainee. I want to warn those who are tuned in across the country, this is a disturbing clip and while this audio plays, imagine how we might feel on either end of this call. Please play the call. I have found everything i can, and all this other chart. And trying to get you out of there. I know you are but i am doing everything i can to get you out so i can see you. Hello . Doing everything they can. My blood, my feet are swollen. I know, i told you. Going to die in here. The crisis in americas prisons, jails and Detention Centers is ongoing and unconscionable. The department of justice and Congress Must treat this as the emergency for Constitutional Rights that it is. I yield to you. You are correct, that is difficult to listen to. Belinda maley, vanessa fano, sincere condolences for the loss of your loved ones. I cant imagine how difficult that is for you to listen to that. First of all let me enter my prepared opening remarks into the record, much of what i prepared, a repeat of what the chairman laid out. Many people might question what equity does the federal government have how state and local governments run their prisons. We heard the equity right there. As the chairman laid out, theres civil rights and basic civil liberties. Presumption of innocence. The rights to a fair trial. A speedy trial. Rights to be given proper care when in custodial. I just want to commend the chairman for doggedly pursuing the truth here. We are experiencing the frustration i have experienced the chairman doing investigations and simply having departments and agencies who will ignore the requests. The American People deserve the truth. The American People deserve to understand what is happening in federal government agencies. I dont know if these things can be prevented from more rigorous oversight exposure but it is the right thing to do. I appreciate your pursuit of these truths. I appreciate the fact that we have been able to work on this in terms of this issue it is interesting, the original law passed in 2000 did produce information. We got a report of 40 pages, chockfull of information. It expired but the department of justice continued to provide information to inform congress and the american public, then congress changed the law, updated the law, and funding attached to it, something went haywire, talking about the legislative test. Which agency can collect the data versus one that cant. It is all bureaucratic bs if you ask me, but it happened and so we lost transparency. It doesnt look like the department of justice is interested in providing that transparency now and it is a serious issue. I dont understand it. But listen. I am going to continue to cooperate with you to get those answers because i think vanessa fano, and Belinda Maley deserve those answers. Hopefully this congressional oversight can do more than assist us in passing new laws. Hopefully it can change save lives. I wish that was the case with your loved ones. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ranking Member johnson. The subcommittees findings which formed the basis for todays hearing are laid out in a bipartisan staff report and i ask unanimous consent that this report be entered into the record. We will now or call our first panel of witnesses for this afternoons hearing. Vanessa fanos sister of jonathan phano who died in east parish prison in louisiana. Belinda maley is the mother of Matthew Laughlin who died in the Chatham Detention Center in georgia. Professor Andrea Armstrong is a professor of law at Loyola University new Orleans College of law. The subcommittee is deeply grateful for your presence, testimony, and courage in appearing today. We look forward to your testimony. The hearing record will remain open for 15 days for any additional comments or questions by members of the subcommittee. The rules of the subcommittee require all witnesses to be sworn in so at this time i would ask you to please stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give before this subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . Thank you. The record will reflect that all witnesses answered in the affirmative. Please be seated. Your written testimonies will be printed for the record in their entirety. We ask that you try to limit your remarks to around five minutes. Vanessa fano, we will hear from you first and you are recognized for your opening remarks. A kind reminder to all three of you when addressing the subcode he please make sure your microphones are on is indicated by the red light. Thank you, chairman and Ranking Member johnson, for the opportunity to testify before you today. Thank you to the Committee Staff whose tireless work made my appearance possible here today. No amount of time can truly heal what i share with you today. Jonathan is my brother, jonathan was so kind to he felt guilty so much as killing a bug. He wants took the bus downtown just to babysit our cousins kids even though it was his own birthday. Jonathan would spend hours upon hours listening to my problems and do anything to support me. At the time, he needed the same support, no one responsible for his care, custody and control gave it to him. Jonathan suffered from bipolar disorder and depression for which he sought professional help and support from his families. He was never any type of threat or danger to us or others. October 2016, jonathan was arrested in baton rouge, louisiana while having mental breakdown and taken to East Baton Rouge Parish prison and ten weeks in pretrial detention jonathan never received a mental evaluation. After cutting his risks he was placed in isolation. Despite frequent phone calls, the family was told jonathan did not want to speak to us. It was only on christmas we heard from him. Jonathan told us he wasnt allowed to call us. During that phone call we learned about jonathans attempt on his own life. We could not get the details before the phone system cut off our calls even though we provided more funds, we were not able to continue the call. We trusted the chance the system. My family trusted the system when it provided us Jonathans Court date. My family flew across the country only to discover we were provided the wrong date. We trusted his public defender would be advocating for jonathans Mental Health care and relief and the advice to wait a little longer for custody to resolve the case. We trusted the Baton Rouge Sheriffs Office to confirm jonathan from the care he needed in detention. February 2, 2017, jonathan hanged himself with a sheet in his cell. When we saw his life, the first time, he was handcuffed to an intensive care unit bed. It was only then we realized how wrong we were to place our trust in a system that told us there was no fault after their own internal investigation of jonathans death. It is only our own insistence over the past 5 years that we have come to learn how hard jonathan tried to receive help, how belittled he was, how no one believed him. How so many other people died in the same jail under the same conditions. Each time i tell jonathans story he feels farther away. I worry for the day when i cant distinctly remember his voice or his face. I tell you jonathans story for every family who experienced the same. I hope in doing so we can improve our beloved nation and prevent this ever happening to another family again. Please accept my respectful request to enter further written testimony into the record, thank you. Thank you, the rest of your written testimony will be so entered without objection. Thank you for your testimony. Belinda maley, we will now hear from you. Dont feel bound by the precise time on the clock, we will accommodate the time you need to share your story and you are recognized for opening statement. Thank you, chairman john ossoff and ranking never johnson for the opportunity to testify before you today. Thank you to Committee Staff whose work made my appearance today possible. Mothers and sons have a special bond. A bond that no one should ever be able to break. Tragically, in my case, that bond was broken. It was broken by a for profit medical provider that brought a painful death on my only son, my only child. My son matthew was scared and alone in the Chatham County georgia Detention Center on a nonviolent drug offense. Matthew was suffering from cardiomyopathy, which the for profit medical provider ignored. Studies show that the prognosis for people with untreated cardiomyopathy is bleak. And matthew was never given any treatment. Cardiomyopathy is bleak. And matthew was never given any treatment. The forprofit medical provider had no intentions of treating him, because cardiology appointments outside of the jail would cut into one of his jailers called his pain and anguish quoteunquote fussy. Il matthew knew he was dying. He told me many times by phone and in a single jail visit that, quote, i needed to get him out of here, and that he didnt want to die here. The pure horror of matthews voice made me feel as though i was dying as well. Matthew died a slow, painful death over the course of weeks. He was too sick to take phone calls or visits. After the one time i got to see him in jail. I never got to hold him to tell them how much i loved him or pray with him. The next time i got to see matthew he had already suffered a brain injuryay after being resuscitated three timesot by te jail staff. My last visit with him was to take them off of life support, where he was still handcuffed to an icu bed and under 24 7 supervision by corrections officer. After 32 years of life with my only son, our bond was broken. And no one, not the health provider, not the infirmary staff, the sheriffs office, or the District Attorney was willingt to help. They did take time to, in fact, one last indignity upon matthew before his death, issuing him a personal recognizance bond after he was braindead. So his death would not count as an in custody death. Not a day goes by that i dont think of what matthew went through. In closing, matthews story might not be over. I will continue to spread awareness of this problem for as long as i am able. With over 2 Million People of people in our jails, there are more mothers, fathers, siblings and friends who were in this same or worse situation. This should not be ignored. That is why enforcement of the death in custody act is so important and could be a tool to hold the forprofit jail and prison medical providersst accountable for unnecessary deaths like matthews, and others. I asked respectively to enter further witness testimony into the record. Thank you. Thank you, ms. Madeley, and without objection your written testimony will be so entered into the record. Ms. Spano, ms. Madeley, thank you for sharing your deeply personal stories with the subcommittee. Professor armstrong, youre now recognize for five minutes to present your opening statement. Chairman ossoff, Ranking Member johnson, and members ofor the subcommittee, thank you for holding this hearing and for the opportunity to testify. Thank you also to the staff who work incredibly hard to pull this together as well as the courage of the families who are appearing as witnesses today. My name is Andrea Armstrong and im a law professor at Loyola University new orleans. I teach any heirs areas of criminal and constitutional law and the research incarceration law and policy. I have visited prisons and jails across the country and i participate in audits of these facilities for their operations and adherence to best practices. My students and i created incarceration transparency. Org, a project and a website that collects, publishes and analyzes deaths in custodyan in louisiana prisons, jails and Detention Centers. At the time that we started that project and continuing today that type of information that we wanted was not available, namely, individual level death records as well as facility level death records so that we could identify which facilities in louisiana were actually the mostas troubled. As weve heard today from other witnesses there are a lot of reasons to be concerned when a death in custody occurs. In w addition to the impact on families and communities, deaths in custody may signal broader challenges in a facility. It is impossible to fix what is invisible and hidden. As Justice Brandeis wrote, sunlight is the best of disinfectants, electric light the most efficient policeman. Increasing public transparency on deaths in custody is a critical step towards ultimately reducing deaths in custody. I would like to share with you a graph i shared with your staff, and it is on page 28 of exhibit one. This chart helps us understand why transparency is so critical. The percentage of suicides that happened in solitary confinement, also known as isolation, restrictive housing, or segregation, is highlighted in pink. And what you can see is we are looking at the location of suicides by the type of facility. So the first column is the department of corrections, those are prisons. The second is juvenile facilities. The third is jails that are locally operated, and the fourth is private. What you can see in pink is that 43 of all suicides in louisiana jailss occurred in solitary confinement. Compare that to only 7 in our state prisons. Of the three youth suicides that happened between 2015 and 2019 in louisiana, two out of three occurred when these youth were confined alone and in segregation. This finding should prompt review of staffing, discipline, security, and Mental Health protocols in the jails where the suicides occurred. But, unfortunately, due to changes in the federal collection of dataea on deaths e will no longer be able to identify patterns like these. Thats because the department of justice no longer collects information on incident locations within a prison or jail. It also doesnt collect information from facilities where there was zeroid deaths, meaning it will be harder for facilities to learn from each other what works and c what doesntt work. Changes in what is collected not then only problem. An addition the department of justice is undercounting deaths. For deaths in 2020 louisiana reported six total deaths to the peer of justice assistance. In contrast what a loss goal identified 180 deaths in 2020 in louisiana prisons and jails. Multiple sheriffs informed our students that there were no longer required to report deaths in custody for federal Data Collection. And if louisianas experience is similar to those of other states, 2020 will be the first year and almost two decades in which the department of justice cannot tell us who is dying behind bars and why. Congress has a range of tools available to help increasee transparency, which ultimately i hope reduce in custody deaths. The work of your committee is vital, and academic researchers liken myself stand ready to assist and to support as needed. Thank you. Thank you, professor armstrong. And thank you again to all three for your powerful testimony today. Ill begin with questions and i would like to begin with you, professor armstrong. Unless senator padilla do you have an imminent professor armstrong i would like to begin with you. Explain how deaths in custody as data can be a proxy or an indicator for conditions in specific facilities. So what we know when you look at the data is we look for patterns in whatsfo happening, right . For example, the slide i shared onen suicides, what that tells s is that there are deep differences between where suicides are occurring which makes they want to look at the policies that are in place. So weree staff doing segregation rounds . Discipline, why were people pt in solitary confinement and for what types of offenses and for how long . We note of the harmful effects of solitary confinement and the ways in which they can both create and aggravate existing serious Mental Illness, in many cases leading to suicide. We also want to think about what other Mental Health protocols. Are they doing the required visual checks, are they doing the suicide watch observations that are required under best practices . Deaths in that we can be the tip of thesu iceberg for understandg what is happening in that facility and their adherence to best practice of. You are the founder of incarceration transparency. Nd what does this organization do, in a nutshell . Its more of a project and an organization but its my students and high. For the past three years now about 60 students we collect publishedan and analyze individl level records of death but i think in terms of transparency the goal is we have a searchable database where you can go and look up any record of death and try to understand whats happening at yourin local facily in particular. Its often because of this database that family members reach out to me for information about the death of their loved ones. And law students making Public Record requests are able to capture this data, correct . Yes. Technically you dont have to be a lawyer to file a Public Records request but it certainly helps and so my students do this every single year. In your view is his work that the federal government should bo doing . Absolutely. Its me and 20 law students once a year. It would be much better at the federal government collected this level of information. And work that is eminently should be eminently within the capacity of the United States department of justice . Absolutely. Thank you, professor. Ms. Maley, thank you again for sharing your families personal tragedy with the public today. I would like to ask you what has motivated you to take this step . The biggest y motivation, and it will serve no justice for my son, there is none, the biggest motivation i have is everyone knows or knows n somebody that s affected by drug use, alcohol use, Mental Illness, and sometimes pure carelessness that could end you being pulled over by your local Law Enforcement agents and put in jail. Its a horrible thing for me to think thatja maybe my nextdoor neighbor going to the store and get pulled overr for something. A minor infraction as we all know can put you in jail and jeopardize your life. I would like some transparency. I would like to be able to know that our Justice System is doing theje right thing according to r Healthcare Providers in these institutions. Thank you. Ms. Spano, thank you as well for sharing your family story, as difficult as i can imagine it must be, and for your powerful testimony. What isnk your message or demand or call to action for members of this subcommittee and the senate and for the folks at the department of justice . Had adequate care been given to my brother, jonathan, i do believe that i would still have him in my life. I believe that if we provide the resources thatra are necessary o admit those who struggle with Mental Illness are less tragedies wille occur. Its just a matter of acknowledging those mistakes and acknowledging that we can improve and be better so that such traumatic incidents will not occur. So that families will not have toso deal with the horrible reality of rather than a loved one coming out of an institution more wellestablished andat awae of how to integrate back into society, they come back in a casket. So i ask that we acknowledge our mistakes and move towards a Better Future for c everyone. Thank you, ms. Fan of. Ate this time with the Ranking Members permission i t will yied to store video for his questions. Thank you, mr. Chair. Thank you, senator johnson for the accommodation. Theres a meeting in a few minutes i need to get to but i want to hurt of all thank you, mr. Chair for your ongoing intelligence of oversight here. And thank all three witnesses for participating. I do have a couple questions for officer armstrong but wanted to begin with ms. Fano not only as a followup to thees chairmans bill question, a followup and then i will share the personal. Followup is somewhat the clear recommendations were to be followed and there iss more transparency and more true data sharing, how could that help your family, so many other families across the country that have experienced similar tragedies . A big part in what had occurred with our family involved our trust. Consistently we were told to do things a certain way, and that things were going correctly. We did not know about how many incidents had occurred. Had we known, had we been disclosed the information of how horrendous the conditions are in that facility and how few actually receive adequate care, we would have insisted upon a different outcome. A lot of our decisions came from pure trust towards our system, towards the appointed attorney that we had, as well as the Staff Members at that correctional facility. So should we change that . I do believe that other families might make the right decisions, might have more acknowledgment of thet, potential dangers, and without acknowledgment comes change. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. I know the data in front of us, the report thats being discussed, spans from jails and folks that are pretrial to prison, folks have been convicted of a wide range of crimes, short senses, long sentences and everything in between but that does nothing to take away fundamental human rights. I mentioned a minute ago, a couple personal, i wanted to share and it begins with a plodding you for being so forthcoming a concern about applauding your families a big on making sure we are undoing stigma and raising awareness. Its wanting to talk about ptsd and a military context. Another one that comes to mothers suffering from postpartum depression or in the Higher Education space, stress on college campuses. Acrosstheboard ms. Wild is a big concern prior too the pandemic. We weve all experienced a huge uptick during the covid19 pandemic and its important to recognize whether its jails, prisons, other institutions, theres no exception to that. Again it comes back to the human rights people deserve in terms of access to care, quality of care, and truth. So the other piece you grew up not too far from where i grew up, very similar communities. So your story resonates, and appreciate your courage to beer and to share. Professorr armstrong, following up on someyo of your work and se of the test when you submitted, in 2020 reuters completed an investigation into how an estimated 5000 people died in jails throughout the country in a single year. Thats a jails. Its not counting prisons. So these people diedun without ever having their case even heard at trial. The data sadly clear and compelling, the u. S. Correctional system occupies the space for class, race, gender and a host of other factors influence how long or how demanding your time in custody will be. However, pretrial time spent inc a correctional facility should never be a de facto death sentence. So i noticed in your written testimony and i will quote, a lack of transparency on death in custody undermined our nations commitment to public safety. Couldin you walk the subcommitte through how a a detailed accounting of deaths in custody would make come with better inform our policymaking here in congress . Absolutely. So first the nationwidede data fromcu 20002019 shows that 20 f deaths in custody were actually of people facing charges, meaning they never had a trial. In louisiana that was 14 of our deaths were pretrial. But think about it this way. If Community Members dont trust the policing, the sheriffs, the facilities, right, and the fact that our system is capable of delivering justice they are less likely to report crime. They are less likely to serve as a witness or to provide testimony in a criminal trial, and they are less likely to themselves feel protected by the same systems when they are a victim of trial. And soe public trust in our criminal justice institutions is fundamental. When we see the Death Penalty exacted without a judicialbl sentence and where a person to arrange for their probability of death is simply a factor of which the subtlety they are assigned to, that undermines their trust and it undermines all of our safety. Thank you. Just a final question. In your written u testimony agan listed a number of suggested amendments that you believe could be useful for better collecting data. Its something to share data but if youre not even clicking on the front end, thats another issue. Among the suggestions you have made is that the bureau of justice assistance collect data on incarcerated people specific medical illnesses and preexisting conditions. Did you mean to include Mental Health conditions as well, and just briefly elaborate on that. So what we know from the prior, from bgs, right, the earlier date is the actually did collect Mental Health observation and practices. Medical illnesses as well although they only asked preexisting conditions for medical condition. They did not ask for Mental Health. So whenn i proposed reverting back to those categories that we used to collect data on that would just come that would include Mental Health as well as medical health. Thank you very much. Thank you mr. Joe. Ranking member johnson. Again, ms. Fano, ms. Malc our sincere condolences. I can imagine how painful it is or youd have to relive this. I can imagine losing a child or sibling. So again thank you. I want toag try and find out, because sons in both of your cases you were certainly not given the kind of contact you would want with a loved one in trouble. Do you pretty well locked up. Letsot start there. While your son, why your brother were alive, how may times were you able to see them or talk to them . We will start with ms. Fano. Approximately. Im not of course. Once . No, sorry. What i meant to say was the only occasion where we were able to get a o phone call through to my brother after multiple attempts from multiple phone numbers as my father, mother, siblings, myself had made attempts throughout the weeks, most likely every other day essentially, we would call and be told he did not want to call us. It was on christmas that was the only time that we ever received a phone call, and was not even longer than two minutes. His total time in custody was how long . The total time in custody was from can i just review . Again, just approximately. Ninetyone days. Ninetyone days. So you believe he did want to talk to you though . He had stated that he wanted to call. So you believe is prison officials were simply lying to you . My brother had stated he had made attempts and it also written one letter to us where he had stated that he wasnt about to call us, and you wanted to talk to us. Ms. Maley, what about in your case . How long was your son in custody, and how many times you obviously knew when he went into custody he already had this health condition, correc . Im going to assume so because cardiomyopathy doesnt happeny overnight. Its a condition that alcoholics and drug addicts get for, not for, because of the wear and tear on your heart. Your vascular system. Right. So with what i know and what ive investigated, that untreated cardiomyopathy can advance rapidly. There are medications, which i mean, its not funny and im shaking my head because its just unbelievable, its also due to fluid buildup. And people with heart issues and fluid retention issues are given a diuretic. Right. Your sons to be alive today, but again were you aware of this condition when he was in custody . No. This is something he developed while in custody . Yes. How many times are we able to see him or talk to him while he was in custody . Onetime. Over a span of how long . Two and a half months. So now following the death of your son andnd your brother, who were you able to talk to within the prison system, within government . What conversations have you met . I will go back to ms. Fano. You or your family members. So, my mother and sister had actually been able to see him one time and they talked to the front desk staff. So im not quite sure the exact names for those individuals. Following when he hung himself we were in contact with numerous members from the facility as they had to follow through an investigation. Im not quite sure the exact names of all of those individuals, as my focus at the time was more of my brother rather than retaining those names. But we were in contact with those individuals following him hanging himself. The most consisting contact we get up without physically was after he had done that. Do you feel they gave you information . Did they give you answers to what happened . Let me cutat to the chase. Did they show compassion . No. So you didnt get any information . It was pretty well they had called us because we are in l. A. , they had an lapd officer, and the lapd officer had a phone with him, and the other individual on the other line only spoke english. My mother speaks spanish. He bluntly stated your brother hung himself. I asked him, is he going to be all right . And he said you have to get here. He most likely isnt. And asked for more details brady stated they were going under investigation at this time. When we arrived, my mother and i were the first to arrive and there was all fronts, no compassion whatsoever. The individual who was guarding him had no compassion. The staff member who led us to the facility had no compassion, just presented us to his body connected to multiple wires and machines that i shared he could still function bodily wise. They stated only as brainstem was functional due to how long he had hung himself and how little oxygen his brain receive of the other part of him, every bit of him that would retain memory, that was him essentially no longer present. I am sorry to be asking you to relive this. I really am. I wish i didnt have to do this. Following that horrible day did you have further conversation with any officials, or wasas t pretty much your last contact . We had stayed a few days as we are waiting for mri results. So they were in a bit of contact with us. There was always a security by his bedside. He was handcuffed to the bed, despite the results ofth them being braindead. At the time of passing a staff member had to be in the room with uss to assure he did die. I do believe we had even wait for him topa come, even though e were all present and ready. We had to wait for him. Following this we received a call. Im unsure of how many days or maybe it was a few weeks, we received a call stating that they had found that there was, there was nothing that went wrong, that investigation was just about clear. They did nothing wrong with his case. Following, this, as my family ad i couldnt quite accept this and we fought for more information and investigation in our own means. The lastpt real statement that they said to us was that they did nothing wrong. They played it a buy the book. Yes. Mr. Chairman, would you like me to continue this . Reluctantly. Ms. Maley, have you talk to authorities following the passing of your son . No. No authorities whatsoever . No, sir. Nobody reached out to you . No, sir. Have you tried to Contact People . No, sir. No. , no. They ignored our phone calls. The only person that talk to us was, before he passed, the only person that told us anything, and very little att that, was te man that worked for the healthcare. And i would call there every day, maybe twice a day, to check on him. And his only response was, hes got 24 hour care, and hes doing fine. To try to reassure you. Excuse me . He tried to reassure you basically . Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Now i know that that was not true. So again no expression of sympathy, no demonstration of any compassion whatsoever in either one of your cases. No, sir. I dont have any further questions right now. Thank you, senator johnson. In part, ms. Sano and ms. Maley, i think that the subcommittee should help insofar as we can to honor and to remember jonathan and matthew, and their lives are having an impact here today. I hope the Ranking Member and i will Work Together to ensure results in change. In remembering and honoring their lives, ms. Fano, can you just tell us a full a bit more about jonathan, what he was like, what he loved, how he lived . Jonathan was my older brother, and with that he was very protective of me. Anytime i had problems he would talk to me about things and give me tips and tricks and how to go about School Projects and how to make new friends even. We used to play silly little video games together. I would always get stuck in certain boxes and he would always jump in and help me. He used to be so into marvel and d. C. , and even now i think of all these Amazing Things that he never gotd to witness that he even said he wanted to. He wanted to see you see adoption of at different coms that he liked. He was incredibly, incredibly empathetic towards other people and animals even. He was vegetarian for a good portion of his life. He didnt like the concept of eating an animal even so much. But even with that he would still come for us who were not make us vegetarian, make a a student ensure we were eating properly. He was just the gluest that held us together. Even when we were frustrated at each other he would attempt at keeping peace when he could. Now we know that there is a whole missing in him. Nothing will ever properly fill that hole again. That was the kind of person that he was, and even despite his Mental Illness, he had a a st. He had a life. He had a hope, and he had wanted so badly to come home. Because we were family. And he loved his family. Over and over again i told him, when i was younger, how one of my biggest fears was losing him. And he promised me i over and or we were family and he wouldnt he wouldnt he wouldnt, but now heather, vanessa and jonathan, its just me. Im here because of him and his legacy. Ms. Fano, how old were you when all this happened . I was still in college. It was happening during finals. That was one of the reasons i wasnt able to see him that last time. And i regret it because i didnt think it was going to be my last chance to see him. I believe i was 19 at the time, because that was five years ago. And ms. Fano, you mentioned that your mother didnt speak english, so you were translating for your family, 19 19 years, throughout this ordeal, is that right . I was the one who had to tell her because she couldnt understand what he was saying. I had to tell her that jonathan hung himself, and that he wasnt going to be okay. Because she kept asking, like, easy going to get better . What are they saying . And i had to explain to her that he wasnt. And that when were going to get there, he wasnt going to be well. I had to explain when we arrived because even then they didnt have anyone one staff or tried o bring anyone on staff that could speak spanish. Essentially through that time it was just us having to translate things about his condition, about his state, about what happened. And i remember asking what do you mean, like he hung himself for that long and they didnt know. How did they notd know . Thank you, ms. Fano. Ms. Maley, would you be willing to share a few words about matthew . Of course. I wasu very proud of my son. He was my heart. He was rambunctious and amazed by things, involved. He was raised in the church. He participated in the church. He loved working on cars. He was involved in car shows. He liked camping and water skiing and traveling. Matthew was not perfect by any means. He was a drug addict. I tried to get him help, and for that there was help, but matthew was unwilling just for some reason. It easier or may be he had Mental Illness that brought that on. But in saying that we all know people that have got problems. And you are there for them unconditionally, and i would have given my life for him. I begged god to take me instead of my son. He had a lot to offer. Like vanessa was brother, and lindas son. He never met the love of his life. He never had children. There were so many things that hes never going to experience in his life. I look at my friends and i am jealous of what they have and what i could have had. And what matthew couldve had, but he made poor choices, and the choices he made i have to live with. And its the most difficult thing that aad person can go through. Im lost without him. I have pictures. I lost all my voicemail from him, so the shock of listening to his voice again, in the worst way possible, is just pretty much too much. Ms. Maley, thank you foror honoring him with your testimony today. Professor, you study policy. You study statistics. This isnt about statistics. The statistics well collected and analyzed can be a tool to save lives, to spare other parents and brothers and sisters this agony. So i would like for you, please, to reflect on that. You believe is so essential for the federal government to fix this. So, i think the first part is one of the things that we do in addition to collecting these records is we tried to do something of what you all are doing here today. Memorialize the lives of people who died in the new orleans jail without talking necessary about their death but understanding, from public understanding, of who these people are, and they were overwhelmingly saints fans. They were poets. They were football players. They had job opportunities. And its important to recognize what we as a community lose, all ofjo us lose when people die in custody. The other part of this that is important in terms of the federal Data Collection is both of these deaths that we are talking about today happened in jails. Jails, theres over, we think about 3000 of them, and i get to see an exact list of every jail that we have in this country and the report they report only toan themselves. The federal government has unique authority to be able to collect this information from the jails in ways that members of the community cannot. Because they are so spread out, because they are all individual systems, doing their own rules with their own policies, their own practices which may differ from facility to facility, it is the unique power of the federal government to be able to collect that information. And jails are where the conditions of incarceration are most hidden from our communities. And is it fair to say, professor, that generally speaking, for each of death there is more suffering, more illness perhaps poorly treated, more folks inside in agony . Yes. I mean, i think the suffering that we are all experiencing today by honoring the lives lost is not just the families. Its not just the people. I am also reminded that we have larger numbers and members of our community who work in these facilities, who witnessed this traumatic incidents because that is their employment. They, too, are traumatized. Other incarcerated people often witness these deaths. They may be the ones first report it, who sound the alarm, who bang on the steel door to alert somebody that the person next to them or in the cell is also dead. That is also continuing trauma that accrues. So i would suggest that the harm to the familiesre is enormous, t it is actually a harm that we all suffer as a community and as a society. Ms. Fano, before your brother was jailed, did you know anything about these baton rouge paris prisons, the jail . No, we didnt know. Reuters, a news organization, conducted a study of jail deaths over the last decade, and they found that from 20092019 there were 45 deaths in that facility, an average of four and half per year, moree than double the national average. Do you think thats information that should be made public and transparent . Yes, absolutely. Ms. Maley, the same newsat organization, reuters, in the same study found that 22 people over the same period died in custody at Chatham CountyDetention Center at her home state of georgia, and that 50 of those deaths were due to illness. Now we know from your sons story that deaths due to illness can also be deaths due to illness and treated or poorly treated or neglected. Dor you believe that is the kind of information that should be made public transparent . Yes. Ranking member johnson, do you have any further questions . Yes, i do, mr. Chairman. Professor armstrong, you say you have 20 students and you do this over, how many man hours to put into what report you generate . I cant even count them. I mean spit is is it over the course of the week or two weeks for the entire semester . So for every fall semester i have approximately 20 20 stu. The semester i have 23. This is a semester long project because they filed a Public Records request that often there is not a response under the Public Recordsec law of louisiaa so you have to constantly go after these facilities by email, phone call, sometimes driving there to get them. We understand the process. Sorry. But do you do this, you folks in one state, one county, what are you doing your . We only do it in the state of louisiana. We do every single detention facility in the state that we are aware d of. So when ever anybody dies there is a coroners report, a death report, there is something. Is that what you are doing your foia on . No. So the jails have to report to the a local coroner but unless u know to file the Public Records request for that, thats difficult to get, one. And two, when we do file public category focus on corners they are difficult for the corner of themselves to identify and then respond. What we do is we file directly with the administrator of that facility and what we ask for is the information that they reported to the federal government. So have you seen the 2002 20022019 . It got a lot of statistics to it. I think what we really do need is we need those individual death reports that show what actually happened. We are talking i think that most, did you say 3000 . Well, senator padilla said 5000 deaths per year. Within a population of 1. 5 Million PeopleMillion People, there will be just deaths of Natural Causes and that type of thing. You are probably talking about a universe of a couple thousand deaths that you are really researching here, deaths in custody, correct . Thats correct, about 200 deaths per year is what we find in louisiana. Im talking nationally now. The reason im asking you how many man hours you put into this, obviously i am a data driven can a guy being an account. To solve problems yet understand what information isny and how difficult it is to gather. I wouldnt think for the department of justice has come to his anybody know how many employees its got . Its quite a few. Okay, you could put a couple folksfo doing this, and obviousy we give them resources to do this, it wouldnt be that difficult to literally gather the death reports on a couple thousand individuals. If theyre not getting this, they started doing this and year 2000, lets start refining the process. This isnt working on when iiv getting from that state. To this date we dont know, how many states did not report . We dont know which states. The department of justice wont tell us, which states they didnt get information from. Go figure. E. It set a National Security issue . The point im trying to make here is i think this is Important Information to have. It really shouldnt be that difficult to gather. Particularly when you been at it were 22 years. There was a break, again we will, the next panel will analyze why this break occurred. Quite honestly how ridiculous it is that it did occur, and why dropped here. But, mr. Chairman, i think i have kind of got what i need from professor armstrong, move on to the next panel but again i want to close with my sincere condolences, my sincere thanks for sharing your tragic stories with us. Its important. We need to know these things. Thanknd you. Thank you, Ranking Member johnson. Ms. Fano, ms. Maley, on behalf of thehe whole subcommittee plee accept ourk gratitude for courage. Our condolence your families the loss lost offensive so. So appreciative of the ordinarilyly open conversation e had today as youve helped to support our efforts to bring compassion and accountability and respect for human life into public policy. Please know that jonathan and matthew are having a a tremens impact here in this room today, and on behalf of the staff and members of the subcommittee will continue working to ensure that impact is magnified through change. Sharingr, thank you for your expertise with us today and for your ongoing work to bring transparency and accountability to thehe system. It is deeply appreciated. That will conclude the first panel. And witnesses are excused with the subcommittees gratitude. Subcommittee will take a brief recess as we prepare the second panel. Thank you. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudiblele conversations] you and senator ossoff are the only to have apologized for this. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] let me tell you, we will. Shortly after matthew passed away, our interim sheriff explained to him [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]