The U.S. Department of Justice will provide the Jackson Police Department and the Hinds County Coroner’s Office with technical assistance to improve both agencies’ death-notification policies, including training to locate next-of-kin, the federal agency announced Thursday.
“Families want and deserve transparency and the opportunity to make decisions about their loved ones’ burials,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. Both the Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi will assist the agencies.
“Through technical assistance, we aim to ensure that officials are able to deliver death notifications and make decisions regarding burials in a timely and trauma-informed way that complies with federal civil-rights law,” Clarke continued.
‘They All Deserved Better’
The news comes months after both the Jackson Police Department and the Hinds County Coroner’s Office announced new death-notification policies following a series of NBC News reports in October of last year about seven families who say that their loved ones were buried at the Hinds County Penal Farm in Raymond, Miss., before any official ever contacted their next-of-kin to claim their bodies.
Pauper’s burials are typically used when officials have exhausted all efforts to contact a deceased person’s next-of-kin to claim their bodies or when a deceased person’s loved ones cannot afford to bury their loved one.
“The department is providing this technical assistance to JPD and the Hinds County Coroner’s Office pursuant to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), which prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin in programs receiving federal financial assistance,” the DOJ release stated.
The federal government decided to assist the local agencies after news reports indicated a public perception that racial animus or other factors played a role in the burials, the press release said. Sensational reports spread on social media in the days after NBC News’ Dec. 18, 2023, report on the 215 “unclaimed people buried in a pauper’s field in Hinds County.”
Dennis Sweet III, one of the attorneys representing Bettersten Wade, Mary Moore Glenn and Gretchen Hankins, three of the women whose loved ones were buried at the graveyard, said Thursday that the DOJ move was “a step in the right direction.”
“Those human beings who found their eternal rest in unmarked graves without their families being notified suffered the final indignity of being deprived of their basic civil rights. They all deserved better,” the attorney said in a statement to the Mississippi Free Press.
“It is unacceptable in this community or any other that such a practice would continue. If it takes federal assistance to get the local government to begin to institute proper investigations, notifications or decisions regarding burials, then so be it,” he continued.
‘Not A Finding Of Fault Or Wrongdoing’
The Department of Justice said that although it is offering technical assistance to improve local policies, the move is “not a finding of fault or wrongdoing by JPD, the Hinds County Coroner’s Office or any other individual or entity. JPD and the Hinds County Coroner’s Office voluntarily agreed to receive technical assistance and support from the department.”
“Prior to this collaboration, Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade took the initiative to update and strengthen the policy that JPD already had in place,” the mayor continued. “The new policy consists of a checks and balances system that will help ensure that all efforts are exhausted when making an effort to notify a decedent’s next of kin.”
“This joint effort with the DOJ is welcomed and will only improve the new standards already in place,” Lumumba said. “This assistance will only help to better serve the residents of our city.”
The DOJ has made several announcements about increased support for officials in the capital city this week. On Wednesday, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives launched a mobile unit in Jackson to assist law-enforcement agencies in the region with investigating gun-related crimes, the Associated Press reported.
The same day, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that Jackson was one of three cities that would receive a “surge of resources to fight violent crime” as part of a Violent Crime Initiative within the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
