Georgia’s child fatality review process, the first of its kind in the nation, has become an empty exercise, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found.
State law mandates that each of Georgia’s 159 counties create a fatality review committee, made up of prosecutors, judges, police, social workers and other officials. The committees are supposed to dig deep into why a child died and search for ways to prevent more deaths.
In 2012, almost 1,000 children age 17 or younger died in Georgia. The county committees reviewed 464 of those deaths and submitted reports to the state body that oversees their work, the Child Fatality Review Panel. The Journal-Constitution obtained copies of all 464 reports under the state Open Records Act. Officials redacted significant portions of the reports: the names of deceased children and their parents, dates of birth and death, even the time of day a child died.
Still, enough data remained to show that, in most cases, the county committees’ work was superficial and slow.
In addition to the 464 child fatality reviews, the newspaper examined a database of all other children’s deaths from 2012. Many were from natural causes or related to premature births. But at least five dozen deaths – homicides and suicides among them – seemed to warrant investigation.
Coming Sunday: This special report appears exclusively in the Sunday AJC, on MyAJC.com and the Today's Paper app.
Also: Search our interactive database showing how the 464 child deaths in Georgia in 2012 were reviewed.
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