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 thank the ranking member for his cooperation. in july, we released the 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 ten month my partisan 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, and the department 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 g.a.o. announces i requested, the department of justice failed to identify at least 998 deaths in custody, nearly 1000 uncounted deaths. the true number is likely much higher. we will hear today from belinda mainly, and vanessa -- whose loved ones died preventively while in custody. in both cases, sons and brothers who died while they were pretrial detainees having been convicted of no crime. we will hear their grief and anger, a 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 at loyola university to understand why and how doj's failure to oversee prisons and jails undermines americans civil rights. we will hear from dr. goodwin of the -- investigative services to congress which analyzed in my request and the -- doj collected in 2021. and who will publicly report those findings today for the first time. we will question miss -- deputy assistant attorney general, about the departments failure since 2019 to implement the death and custody reporting act, a failure that has undermined federal oversight of conditions and prisons in jails nationwide. therefore undermining americans human constitutional rights. . members of congress or to support and defend the constitution of the united states, to defend the constitutional rights of all americans. in my state and every state. including the rights of those 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. as federal legislators serving on the nations preeminent investigative panel, it is our obligation to investigate the federal government's complicity in this disgrace. therefore, 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't defend the civil rights and civil liberties. there are some bright spots. for example, i was encouraged when assistant attorney general kristen clark announced a doj investigation of conditions in georgia's horrific state prisons, almost one year ago today. it has become clear in the course of this investigation that the department is failing in its responsibility to implement that death in custody reporting act. that is 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 2000, then again in 2014, congress passed the death in custody reporting act, also known as -- tasking doj with the -- custodial death data nationwide. your day itself describes this law as, quote, an opportunity to improve understanding of why deaths occur in custody and develop solutions to prevent avoidable deaths. but for nearly 20 years, doj collected and published this data, an invaluable resource for the department, for the congress, and the public. then, abruptly, the publication stopped. our investigation followed. we found that in recent years, and over multiple administrations, the departments implementation of this law has failed. despite clear internal warnings from doj's own inspector general, and doj's bureau of statistics, for example, in the first quarter fiscal year 20, the department did not capture any state prison deaths in 11 states, or any jail deaths in 12 states, the district of columbia. in fy 21 alone, according to g.a.o. -- with the department failed to identify nearly 1000 deaths. in my assessment, the true number is much higher. of those recorded, 70% of the records were incomplete. 40% of records failed to capture the circumstances of death. the department of justice has failed to collect a complete or accurate state and local death data for the past two years and fail to report to congress have data about deaths in custody can be used to save lives. a report required by law that is now six year passed duke. we recently learned it's not expected to be produced for another two years. pieces investigation also found the department has no plans to make state and local death data public again, despite the obvious public interest in this transparency. today's hearing may dive at times into arcane discussions of administrative regulations or the close parsing of legislative text. those discussions are relevant. they are relevant. if the department has concluded in 2020 28 years after this law was reauthorized, that it is incapable of successfully implementing it, i'm surely willing to work with them to help fix that. but this hearing is about something more fundamental. americans are needlessly dying, and are being killed, while in the custody of their own government. in our july hearing focused on the federal prison system, we revealed that federal pretrial detainees have been denied proper nutrition, hygiene, and medical care, endured months of lockdown with limited or no access to outdoors or -- rats and roaches investing their cells. we reveal that federal inmates killed themselves wild basic practices of suicide wellness checks were neglected. a abusive and unconstitutional practices by the federal government that likely led to loss of life in -- wheat revealed that the bureau of prisons, was warned for years, by its own investigators of corruption and misconduct in its own facility, and of a, quote, lack of regard for human life by its own personnel. today, we will hear about the experiences of americans in state and local prisons and -- americans entitled to constitutional rights no matter where they are incarcerated, whether they are incarcerated, and we will hear about americans who died in custody, many of whose deaths and causes of death are not being counted by the federal government, as the federal government is bound to count them. the same federal government obligated to defend their constitutional rights. before i yield to the ranking member, and with mailing permission, we will listen to an audio clip of the last phone call that she shared with her son while he was jailed. a pretrial detainee who was never convicted of any crime. i want to warn those who are tuned in across the country that this is a from -- as that we imagine how we might feel to be on either end of this call. please play the audio. >> okay, listen, i found out everything i can. i'm having lawyers -- trying to make it i'm trying to get you out of there. >> i want to go to the hospital. i'm one -- i'm going to die in here. >> i know you are. i'm doing everything i can to get you out. so i can see you. hello? >> yes. >> -- my feet are swollen. they hurt. >> i know, matthew. i know what's wrong with you. i told you -- they're gonna cut us off matthew, i love. you >> i love you too. i'm going to die in here! >> the crisis in americas prisons, jails, and detention centers is ongoing and unconscionable. the department of justice and the congress must treat this as the emergency for constitutional rights that it is. senator johnson, i yield to you. >> thank you, mister chairman. you are correct, that's very difficult to listen to. ms. maley, miss -- , our sincere condolences for the loss of your loved ones. i can't imagine how hard it is for you to listen to that. first of all let me just enter my opening remarks into the record. much i -- the repeat of what the chairman has laid out. i think many people might question what equity does the federal government have in how state and local governments run their prisons. i think we just heard the equity right there. as the chairman laid out, there is civil rights, and basic civil liberties. the presumption of innocence. the right to a fair trial. a speedy trial. the rights to be given proper care when in custody. i just want to commend the chairman for doggedly pursuing the truth here. i think what -- you are certainly experiencing the frustrating -- simply having the departments and the agencies -- people ignore -- the american people deserve the truth here. the american people deserve to understand what's happening in federal government agencies. i don't know whether these things could be prevented from more rigorous federal government oversight, congressional oversight, exposure. but it's just the right thing to do. so again, mister chairman, i appreciate your pursuit of jeez truths -- i appreciate the fact that you've been able to work -- specifically in terms of this issue right here. i think it is interesting, the original as in the year 2000 -- 40 some pages long here. it's chock full of information. i know it expired, but the department of justice kept fighting this information to inform congress and the american public. then congress changed the law, the updated the law, and put funding attached to it with penalties and something went haywire. you are talking about exact legislative text. which agency can collect the data versus one that can't. it's all bureaucratic bs if you ask me, but it happened. so we lost the transparency. and it doesn't look like the department of justice is particularly interested in providing that transparency now, and that's a serious issue. i don't understand it. but listen, i'm going to continue to cooperate with you to try to get those answers because i think, ms. fano, ms. maley, i think you deserve those answers. and hopefully, some of this congressional oversight can do more then assist us in this passing new laws. hopefully it can save lives. i wish that could have been the case with your loved ones. but thank you, mister chairman. to >> thank you, ranking member johnson. the subcommittee's findings, which formed the basis for today's hearings, are laid out in a bipartisan staff report. i ask unanimous consent that this report be entered into the record. we will now call our first panel of witnesses for this afternoon's hearing. to miss vanessa fano's the sister of jonathan fano misses belinda maley it's a brother of -- 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 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're 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 informative. 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. ms. fano, we will hear from you first, and you are recognized for your opening remarks. of kind reminder -- please make sure your microphones are on as indicated by the red light. thank you, ms. fano. >> thank you, chairman ossoff and ranking member johnson -- and thank you for the committee stuff, made my appearance -- no amount of time can truly heal what i share with you today. jonathan luis fano's my brother. he was so kind. he felt guilty so much is 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 would do anything to support me. but 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 family. he was never any type of threat or danger to us or to others. in october 2016, jonathan was arrested and baton rouge, louisiana, while having a mental breakdown, and taken to east baton rouge parish prison. in his ten weeks in pretrial detention, jonathan never received a mental evaluation. after cutting his wrists, he was placed in isolation. despite our frequent phone calls, our family was repeatedly told that jonathan did not want to speak to us. it was only on christmas that we heard from him. jonathan told us he wasn't allowed to call us. during that phone call, we learned about jonathan's attempt on his own life. we could not get the details before the for profit phone system cut off our call. even though we provided more funds, we weren't able to continue the call. e we trusted the system. my family trusted the system when it provided us jonathan's 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 jonathan's mental health, care, and release, and the advice to which is a little longer in custody to resolve the case. we trusted the baton rouge sheriff's office who confirmed jonathan was receiving the care he needed in detention. on february 2nd, 2017, jonathan hanged himself with a bedsheet in his cell. when we finally saw his lifeless body, the first time in ten weeks, he was handcuffed to an intensive care unit bed. it was only then we realized how wrong we were to place our trust in the system, which told us there was no fault after their own internal investigation of jonathan's death. it is only through our own insistence over the past five 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 have died in the same jail, under the same conditions. each time i tell jonathan's story, he feels farther away. i worry for the day where i can't distinctly remember his voice or his -- or even his face. i tell you jonathan's story for every family who has experienced the same. and i hope in doing so we can improve our beloved nation and prevent this from happening to another family again. please except my respectful request to enter further written testimony into the record. thank you. >> thank you, ms. fano, and the rest of your testimony will be so entered without objection. ms. maley, don't feel bound by the precise time on the clock -- you are recognized for your opening statement. >> thank you, senator ossoff and ranking member johnson, for the opportunity to testify before you today. and thank you to committee staff, whose work made my appearance here today possible. mothers and sons have a special bond, a bond no one should 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 claude for people with untreated cardiomyopathy is bleak. and matthew was never given any treatment. the for-profit medical provider had no intentions of treating him, because cardiology appointments outside of the jail would cut into their profit margin one of his jailers called his pain and anguish, quote, unquote, fussy. 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 didn't want to die here. the pure horror of matthew's 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 him how much i loved him, or pray with him. then the next time i got to see matthew, he had already suffered braid injuries after being resuscitated three times by the jail staff. my last visit with him was to take him off of life support. he was still handcuffed to an icu bed and under 24/7 supervision by a corrections officer. after 32 years of life with my only son, our bond was broken. no and no one, not the health provider, not the infirmary staff, the sheriff's office, or the district attorney, was willing to help. they did take time to enact one last indignity upon matthew before his death. they issued him a personal recognizance bond after he was brain did. so his death would not count as and in custody death. not a day goes by that i don't think about what matthew went through. this in closing, matthew's 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 in our prisons and jails, there are more millions of mothers, fathers, siblings and friends who are in the same or worse situations. this should not be ignored. this is why enforcement of the death in custody act is so important. it could be a tool to hold the for-profit jail and prison medical providers accountable for unnecessary deaths like matthews and others. i ask respectively to enter further written testimony into the record. thank you. >> thank you, ms. maley. without objection, your testimony will be so entered into the record. thank you for sharing your difficult, deeply personal stories with the subcommittee, ms. maley and ms. fano. professor armstrong? you are now recognized for five minutes to present your opening statement. >> chairman ossoff, ranking member johnson, and members of the subcommittee. thank you for holding this hearing, and for the opportunity to testify. thank you also to the staff who worked 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 i'm a law professor at loyola university new orleans. i teach in the areas of criminal and constitutional law, and i research incarceration law and policy. i have visited prisons and jails across the country, and i've participated in audits of these facilities for their operations and adherence to best practices. my students and i created incarceration transparency dot org, it's a project and a website that collects, publishes, and analyzes deaths in custody in louisiana prison, jails, and detention centers. at the time that we started that project, and continuing today, the type of information that we wanted was not available, mainly individual level death records, as well as facility level death records, so that we can identify which facilities in louisiana were actually the most troubled. as we've heard today from other witnesses, there are a lot of reasons to be concerned when a death in custody occurs. in 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, some light is the best of disinfectants, electric like the most efficient policemen. increasing transparency on debts and custody is the critical step towards ultimately reducing deaths in custody. i'd like to share with you a graph that i shared with your staff, and it's 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. 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 iv's private. what you can see in pink is that 43% of all suicides in louisiana jails occurred in solitary confinement. compare that to only 7% in our state prisons. of the three youth suicide that happened between 2015 and 2019 in louisiana, two out of three occurred when these youths 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 data on deaths, we will no longer be able to identify patterns like these. that's because the department of justice no longer collects information on incident locations within a prison or jail. it also doesn't collect information from facilities where there were zero deaths, meaning it will be harder for facilities to learn from each other what works and what doesn't work. changes in what's collected is not the only problem. in addition, the department of justice is undercounting deaths. four deaths in 2020, louisiana reported six total deaths to the bureau of justice -- in conscious, loyola law students identified 180 deaths in 2020 in louisiana prisons and jails, and multiple sheriffs informed our students that they were no longer required to report deaths in custody for federal data collection. if louisiana's experience is similar to those of other states, 2020 will be the first year in 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 increase transparency, which ultimately, i hope, will reduce in custody deaths. the work of your committee is vital and academic researchers like 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. i will begin with questions, and i'd like to begin with you, professor armstrong. unless senator padilla -- professor armstrong, at that 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 we look at the data as we look for patterns and what's happening, right? so for example, the slide that i shared on suicides, what that tells us is there are deep differences between where suicides are occurring, which makes me want to look at the policies that are in place. so we are staff doing -- discipline, why were people put in solitary confinement? and for what types of offenses? and for how long? because we know of the harmful effects of solitary confinement, and the ways in which it can both create and aggravate existing serious mental illness. in many cases, at least a suicide. we also want to think about what are the mental health protocols. are they doing the required visual checks? are they doing the suicide watch observations? those are required under best practices. deaths in that we could be the tip of the iceberg for understanding what is happening in that facility and their adherence to best practices. >> professor, you are the founder of incarceration transparency. what is this organization in a nutshell? >> it's more of a project than an organization. but it's my students and i, so for the past three years, about 60 students, we collect, publish, and analyze individual level records of death -- 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 what's happening at your local facility in particular. it's often because of this database that family members reach out to me for information about the deaths of their loved ones. >> law students making public record requests are able to capture this data, correct? >> yes. technically, you don't have to be a lawyer to file a public records request, but it certainly helps. so my students do this every single year. >> and in your view, is this work that the federal government should be doing? >> absolutely. it's me and 20 lawsuits once a year, it would be much better if the federal government corrected this level of information. >> indeed, it's work that 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'd like to ask you, what has more to debated you to take this step? >> the biggest motivation, and it will serve no justice for my son, there will be none. the biggest motivation i have is everyone knows or knows somebody that is affected by drug use, i'll call use, mental illness, and sometimes your carelessness, that can end you being pulled over by your local law enforcement agent and put in jail. it's a horrible thing for me to think of, maybe my next door neighbor may be going to the store and get pulled over for something, a minor infraction, as we all know, which can put you in jail. it can jeopardize your life. i would like some transparency. i would like to be able to know that the system -- according to our health care providers in these institutions. >> thank you, ms. maley. ms. fano, thank you as well for sharing your families story, as difficult as i can imagine it must be, and for your powerful testimony. what is your message or demand or call to action for members of this subcommittee, and the senate, and for the folks of the department of justice? >> had adequate care been given to my rather, i believe i would still have in my life. i believe that if we provide the resources that are necessary to inmates who struggle with mental illness, far less tragedies will occur. it's just a matter of acknowledging those mistakes and acknowledging that we can improve and be better so that such dramatic incidents will not occur. so that families will not have to deal with the horrible reality of rather than a loved one coming out of an institution more will establish and aware 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 everyone. >> think you, ms. fano. at this time, with the ranking member's permission, i will yield to senator padilla for his questions. >> thank, you mister chair. thank you, senator johnson, for the accommodation -- i wanted to, first of all, thank you mister chair, for your ongoing diligence and oversight here. i think all three witnesses participating, i do have a couple of questions for professor armstrong, but i wanted to begin with ms. fano. as a follow-up to the chairman's question, i guess the follow-up, and then i will share the personal, the follow-up is, if some of the clear recommendations were to be followed, and there is more transparency, and more true data sharing, how could that help you, your family, and so many other families across the country that are experiencing 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've been disclosed the information of how horrendous the conditions are in that facility, and how few actually received adequate care, we will 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 believe other families might make right decisions, have more acknowledgment of the potential dangers, and with acknowledgment can come change. >> thank you. thank you for sharing. the report in front of us that's being discussed spans from jails and folks that are pre trial to prison, folks that have been -- short sentences, long sentences, and everything in between. but that that does nothing to take away fundamental human rights. i mentioned a minute ago, just a couple of personal comments and one of the share, and it begins with applauding you for being so forthcoming with your concerns about mental health -- are families big on making sure we are undoing stigma and raising awareness. it's one thing to talk about the ptsd in the military context, another one that comes to mothers suffering from postpartum depression or the higher education space, stress on college campuses across the board, mental health was a huge concern -- a huge uptick during the covid-19 pandemic, and it's important to recognize, whether it's jails, prisons, other institutions, they are no exception to that. and again, i come back to the human rights people deserve in terms of access to care, quality of care, and truth. the other piece, you grew up not too far from eye -- where i grew up. very similar communities. your story resonates, and i appreciate your courage to be here and to share. professor armstrong, following up on some of your work and some of the testimony that you've submitted. in 2020, reuters completed an investigation into how an estimated 5000 people died in jails throughout the country in a single year. that's jails. it's not counting prisons. so these people died without ever having their case even heard. the -- the u.s. correctional system occupies a space where class, race, gender, and host of other factors influence how long or how demanding your time in custody will be. however pretrial time spent in 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 deaths in custody undermines our nations commitment to public safety. could you walk the subcommittee through how a detailed accounting of this in custody would -- would better inform our policy making here at congress? >> so first, the nationwide data from 2000 to 2019 shows that 20% of deaths in custody were actually of people facing charges, meaning they had never had a trial. in louisiana, that was 14% of our deaths, pre trial. but think about it this way. if community members don't trust the policing, the sheriff's, the facilities, 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 those same systems when they are a victim of -- so public trust in our criminal justice institutions is fundamental. when we see the death penalty exacted without a judicial sentence, and where a person's range -- or their probability of death is simply a factor of which facility they are assigned to, that undermines their trust and it undermines all of our safety. >> thank you. final question. in your written testimony, again, you listed the number of suggested amendments that you believe could be useful for better collecting data. it's one thing to share data, but if you are collecting it out of the front, and that's another issue. among the suggestions you made is that the bureau of justice -- specific medical illnesses, and preen hissing conditions. did you mean to include mental health conditions as well, just briefly elaborate on that? >> what we know from the prior, from b hst, earlier, data is that they did collect mental health observation and practice. medical illnesses as well, though they only -- they did not ask for mental health. so when i proposed reverting back to those categories that we used to collect data on, yes, that would include mental health as well as medical health. >> thank you very much. thank you, mister chair. >> thank you, senator padilla. rancor -- ranking member johnson. >> -- our sincere condolences, and i can't imagine how painful it is for you to have to relive this. i can't imagine using -- losing a child or a sibling. so again, thank you. i want to try and find out, because it sounds, in both of your cases, you were certainly not given the kind of contact you would want with a loved one in trouble. you are pretty well blocked out. let's start there, while your son and your brother were alive, how many times were you be able to see them or talk to them? let's start with ms. fano. approximately. >> of course. >> the only occasion where we were able to get a phone call through to my brother after multiple attempts through multiple phone numbers, as my father, my mother, my son, within myself, made attempts throughout the week, mostly 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 it 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? >> just approximately. >> 91 days. >> 91 days. you believe he did want to talk to you, though. >> he had stated that he wanted to call. >> your balloon -- your belief is that the prison was simply lying to you. >> my brother had stated he had made attempts and he had also written one letter to us, where he had stated that he wasn't allowed to call us, and he 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 was already with this health condition, right? >> i'm going to assume so. cardiomyopathy doesn't happen overnight. it's a condition that alcoholics and drug addicts get for -- not for -- because of the wear and tear on your heart, on your vascular system. so with what i know, and what i have investigated, that untreated cardiomyopathy can advance rapidly. there are medications, which, i mean, it's not funny, and i'm shaking my head, because it's just unbelievable. it's also due to a fluid buildup. and people with heart issues and fluid retention issues are given a diuretic. >> your son should be alive, but where you are wearing this condition when he went into custody? >> no. >> this is something that the belt of he was in custody. >> how many times were you able to see him or talk to him -- >> in the span of how long again? >> two and a half months. >> two and a half months. so now, following the death of your son and your brother, who were you able to talk to within the prison system, within government, what conversations were you having? 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 had talked to the front desk staff. so i'm not quite sure of 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 and investigation. i'm 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 consistent cow that we did have with that facility was after he had done that. >> do you feel they gave you information? do they give you answers to what happened? let me cut to the chase. did they show compassion? >> no. >> no information, and it was pretty -- well >> they had called us because we are in l.a., they had an lapd officer come and he 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 him self. i asked him, is it going to be all right? and he said, you have to get here. he most likely -- i asked for more details -- 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 liars and machines that assured he could still function bodily wise. they had stated that only his brain stem was functional due to how long he had hung himself and how little oxygen his brain had received. every other part of them, every bit of him that would retain memory that was him essentially was no longer present. >> i am sorry to be asking you to relive this. i really am. i wish i didn't have to do this. following that horrible day, did you have further conversations with any officials, or was that pretty much your last contact? >> we had stayed a few days as we were 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 of him being branded. and at the time of passing, a staff member had to be in the room with us to assure he did die. i do believe that we had to eat and wait for him to come, even though we were all present, and ready. we had to wait for him. following this, we received a call. i'm unsure of how many days, maybe it was a few weeks, but we received a call stating that they had found that there was nothing that went wrong, that the investigation was just about clear. they did nothing wrong with his case. following this, my family and i couldn't quite accept this and we sought for more information and investigation in our own means. but the last real statement that they said to us was that they did nothing wrong. >> they played by the book. >> yes. >> mister chairman, would you like me to continue this? reluctantly, ms. maley, have you talked 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. now. 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 at that, was the man that worked for the health care, and i would call there every day, maybe twice a day, to check on him, and his only response was, he's got 24-hour care. and he's doing fine. >> he was trying to reassure you. >> excuse me? >> he tried to reassure you, basically. >> yes, sir. which, now i know, that was not true. >> again, no expression of sympathy, no demonstration of any compassion whatsoever, in either one of your cases. >> no, sir. >> i don't have any further questions right now. >> thank, you senator johnson. in part, ms. fano and ms. maley, i think that the subcommittee should help in so far as we can to honor and to remember jonathan and matthew, and their lives are having an impact here today that i think the ranking member and i will -- results and change. in remembering and honoring their lives, ms. fano, can you tell us a bit more about jonathan, what he was like, when he loved, how he lived? . >> jonathan was my older brother. and with that, he was very protective of me. anytime i had problems, he will 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 a little of video games together. i would always get stuck at certain bosses and he'd always jump in and help me. he used to be so into marvel and d.c. and even now, i think of all of these amazing things he never got to witness that he even said he wanted to. he wanted to see adaptations a different comics he liked. he was incredibly, incredibly empathetic towards other people, and animals, even. he was vegetarian for a good portion of his life. he didn't like the concept of eating an animal so much. but even with that, he would still, for us who weren't vegetarian, make us food, and make sure we were eating properly, and he was just the glue that held us together. and 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, and nothing will ever properly fill that hole again. but that was the kind of person that he was, and even despite his mental illness, he had a story, he had a life, he had a home, and he had wanted so badly to come home. because we were a family, and he loved his family. and over and over again, i told him, when i was younger, one of my biggest fears was losing him. he promised me, over and over, that we are family and he wouldn't -- but now rather than vanessa and jonathan, it's just me. and i'm here because of him. and his legacy. >> how old were you when all of this happened? >> i was still in college. it was happening during finals. that was one of the reasons i was unable to see him that last time. i regret it. because i didn't think it was going to be my last chance to see him. i believe i was 19 at the time. it was five years ago. >> you mentioned that your mother didn't speak english, so you are translating for your family, 19 years old, throughout this whole ordeal, is that right? >> i was the one that had to tell her, because she couldn't understand what he was saying. so i had to tell her that jonathan hung himself. and that he wasn't going to be okay, because she kept asking, is it going to get better? what are they saying? and i had to explain to her that he wasn't, and that when we were going to get there, he wasn't going to be well. and i had to explain when we arrived, because even then, they didn't have anyone on staff or tried to 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, he hung himself for that long? and they didn't know? how did they not know? >> thank you. ms. maley, would you be willing to share a few words about matthew? >> of course. i was very proud of my son. he was my heart. growing, up he was rambunctious, 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, he found it easier or maybe 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 venice's brother, and linda's son, he never -- he never met the love of his life, he never had children, there were so many things that he's never going to experience in the life. i look at my friends and i'm jealous of what they have and what i could have had, what matthew could've had. but he made poor choices, and the choices that he made, i have to live with. and it's the most difficult thing that a person can go through. i'm lost without him. i have pictures. i lost all my voice mails from him, so the shock of listening to his voice again, in the worst way possible-y, it's just pretty much too much. >> thank you for honoring him with your testimony today. professor, -- >> thank you. >> you studied policy, you study statistics. this isn't about statistics. the statistics while collected and analyzed can be a tool to save lives, to spare other parents and brothers and sisters. this agony. so i'd like for you to please to reflect on that, share why you believe is so essential for the federal government to fix this. charlotte so, i think that the first part is one of the things that we do in addition to collecting these records, is that we try to do something that what y'all are doing here today. we memorialize the die -- without talking necessarily about their death, but understanding, for the public understanding of who these people are. they are overwhelmingly saints fans, they were poets, they were football players, they had job opportunities. it is important to recognize what we, as a community lose, all of us lose, when people die in custody. the other part of this that is important in terms of the federal data collection, is that both of these deaths that we are talking about today happened in jails. jails, there is over 3000 of them, and i have yet to see an exact list of every jail that we have in this country. they report only to themselves. the federal government has unique authority to be able to collect this information from the jails in ways that the community cannot. because they are so spread out, they are all individual fiefdom's, doing their own policies, practices, which means different things from facility to facility. it is the unique power of the federal government to cover that information. jails are where the conditions of incarceration are most hidden from our communities. >> is it fair to say, a professor, that generally speaking, for each death there is more suffering, more illness, perhaps poorly treated, more folks inside in agony? >> i think that the suffering we are all experiencing today obtained by honoring the lives lost. it's not just the families, it's not just the people, i am also reminded that we have large numbers of our community who work in these facilities, who witnessed these traumatic incidents, because that is their employment. they too are traumatized. other incarcerated people often witnessed these deaths, they may be the ones who first reported it who, sound the alarm, bang on the still doors to alert somebody that the person next to them, were in their cell are also dead. they are also continuing trauma that accrues. and so i would suggest that the harm to the families is enormous, but it is also a harm that we all suffer as a community, as a society. >> before you and your brother where -- did you know anything about these baton rouge paris prison, the jail? >> no, we didn't know. >> what reuters, the news organization conducted a study of jail deaths over the last decade, and they found that from 20, 009, 2019, there were 45 deaths in that facility. an average of four and a half per year, more than double the national average. do you think that is information that should be made public and transparent? >> yes. absolutely. >> the same news organization, reuters, in the same study, found that 22 people over the same period head -- in our home state of georgia, and that 50% of those deaths we are due to illness. we know from your stuns story that deaths due to illness, can also mean deaths due to illness untreated, or poorly treated, or neglected. do you believe that is the kind of information that should be made public transparently? >> yes. >> ranking member johnson, do you have any more questions? >> yes i do, mister chairman. professor armstrong, you say you have 20 students, how many man hours do put into a report generated? >> i can't even count them. >> isn't over the course of a week, two weeks, entire semester? >> for every fall semester i have approximately 20 students. this semester, i have 23. this is a semester long project, because they filed the public record requests, but often there is not a response under the public records law of you louisiana. they have to go after these facilities by email, phone, call driving there sometimes. >> we understand the process. the focus on one state, one county, what are you doing here? >> we do it in the state of louisiana, we do every single detention facility in the state that we are aware of. >> whenever anybody dies, there is a coronary report, a death report, there is something. is that what you are doing? >> no. the jails have to report to the local corner, but as long as he knows to file the public records request for that, that is difficult to get one into when we do file record -- on corners, they often do not cart -- as in custody death, and so they're difficult for the corners themselves to identify and respond. what we do is file directly with the administrator of that facility. what we ask for is the information that we reported to the federal government. >> have you seen the 2002, 2019, it's got a lot of statistics? what we do need is those individual death reports to show what actually happened. we are talking, i think that most, would you say 3000? >> within a population of 1.5 million people, there will be 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 there at the custody, correct? >> that's correct, about 2000 deaths per year in louisiana. >> in louisiana, i'm talking about nationally. the reason i ask how many man hours you put into this, obviously i'm a data driven kind of guy, and strive have to solve problems, i have to see what the information is, how difficult is it together? i would not think for the department of justice who has -- do you know how many employees it has? it has quite a few. you put a couple folks doing this, and obviously we give them resources to do this, it would not be that difficult to gather the deaf reports on a couple thousand individuals if they are not getting it. we started doing this in the year 2000, we have to redo the process. to this day, how many states didn't report? we don't even know what states. their department of justice will not tell us, we need that information. go figure. is that a national security issue? >> the point i'm trying to make here is that i think, together with all of you and the chairman, this is in for -- it really should not be that difficult to gather. particularly when you've been had for 22 years, there is a break -- and again, the next panel will analyze why the next break occurs, and why the ball was dropped here. mr. chairman, i have got what i needed from professor armstrong to move on to the next panel, but i want to close with a sincere condolences, sincere thanks for sharing your tragic stories with us. it is important, we need to know these things. thank you. >> thank you, ranking member johnson. and miss fano, please accept our gratitude for your presence, and our condolences for your loss. the loss of your family. -- >> as you have helped support our efforts to bring compassion and accountability, and respect for cup public life into public policy. please know that jonathan and matthew are having a tremendous impact in this room today. we will continue to ensure that impact is magnified through change. >> thank you for sharing your expertise with us today, and for your ongoing work to bring transparency and accountability this system. it is deeply appreciated. that will conclude the first panel. witnesses are excused, with the subcommittees gratitude. we will take a brief recess, we prepare for the second panel. thank you. >> let me tell you, it works well. shortly after matthew passed away, our interim sheriff, explain to him --
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