The Cost of Police Misconduct Act of 2026 requires federal law enforcement agencies and State or local governments that receive Byrne JAG grants to collect and report detailed information about judgments and settlements tied to allegations of officer misconduct to the Attorney General. The Attorney General must publish a public, searchable database and the Comptroller General will study the aggregated data after two full years.
The measure pairs transparency with enforcement: noncompliant States or localities risk up to a 10% reduction in Byrne JAG and/or COPS on the Beat funds, and the DOJ must produce recurring reports with recommended best practices. For budget officers, municipal counsel, and compliance teams this creates new recordkeeping obligations, disclosure of settlement funding sources, and increased public and analytic scrutiny of police liability costs.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill mandates annual collection and reporting of judgments and settlements arising from misconduct allegations and requires the Attorney General to publish a public, searchable database (with officer PII redacted). It also directs the GAO to study the data after two years and authorizes up to a 10% grant penalty for Byrne JAG or COPS funding noncompliance.
Who It Affects
All Federal law enforcement agencies listed by the DOJ, plus any State or local government that receives Byrne JAG funds. Indirectly affected parties include municipal budget offices, liability insurers, risk pools, civil rights organizations, and researchers.
Why It Matters
For the first time at this scale, the federal government would collect standardized, nationwide dollar figures and funding-source information on police liability—data that can reshape budgeting, insurance pricing, and policy responses to recurring misconduct patterns.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The Act starts by defining key terms—most importantly what counts as an “allegation of misconduct” and what constitutes a “law enforcement agency.” Those definitions are broad: allegations can originate from community members, fellow officers, or others, and misconduct spans unlawful acts, torts, and other inappropriate actions in the course of duty. That breadth matters because it sets a low bar for inclusion and pushes agencies to capture many dispute types, not just criminal prosecutions.
The Attorney General must first identify and publish an inventory of federal law enforcement agencies within 90–120 days of enactment. Once that list is established, federal agencies on it must begin collecting, on an annual basis, data about every judgment or settlement tied to misconduct.
Required data elements are specific: demographics (race, ethnicity, sex, age) of officers and civilians when known; years of alleged conduct and reporting; granular allegation types (including body‑camera failures and categories of force); personnel actions (resignation, termination, demotion); dollar amounts paid; and, crucially, the source of payment (Judgment Fund, agency appropriations, insurance, bonds, risk pools, or other sources). Agencies must file annual reports to the Attorney General within 60 days after year end, with a possible 60‑day extension for good‑faith efforts.States and localities are brought into the same architecture through Byrne JAG grant conditions.
Any State or locality receiving Byrne JAG funds must collect comparable data and disclose more detailed finance information: how much of a judgment came from general operating budgets, law‑enforcement budgets, bonds (including total future bond costs), insurance premiums, or central risk pools. Each reporting State or locality must publish the submitted information on its website within 30 days of transmission to DOJ.
The Attorney General will cross‑check incoming reports against open‑source sources (court and media records) as practicable.Enforcement is financial and administrative rather than criminal. A State or locality that fails to comply risks up to a 10% reduction in its Byrne JAG allocation, a 10% reduction in COPS on the Beat funds, or both; withheld funds are reallocated to compliant jurisdictions.
Separately, within one year DOJ must create and maintain a public, searchable database of the reported data (excluding personally identifiable officer information), and the GAO will conduct a broader study after two full years of collected data, producing findings on causes, leading contributors to liability dollars, and recommendations. The DOJ also must publish annual reports of best practices and use‑of‑force recommendations developed in consultation with stakeholder groups.
The Act preserves existing Privacy Act protections and explicitly bars publishing officer PII in the public database.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The Attorney General must identify and publish the federal law enforcement agencies subject to the law within 120 days of enactment.
Federal agencies must report annual line‑level data for each judgment or settlement, including demographics, allegation type (explicitly listing body‑camera failures and specific force categories), personnel actions, and total amounts paid.
States and localities that receive Byrne JAG funds must disclose how much of each settlement came from general operating budgets, agency budgets, bonds (including total future cost), liability insurance premiums, or risk‑pool contributions.
Failure to comply can trigger up to a 10% reduction in Byrne JAG and/or COPS on the Beat funding for the fiscal year of noncompliance or the subsequent fiscal year, with withheld funds reallocated to compliant jurisdictions.
The DOJ must create a public, searchable database within one year (redacting officer PII) and the GAO will produce a public study and report after two full years of collected data.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title
Establishes the Act’s citation as the "Cost of Police Misconduct Act of 2026." This is a housekeeping provision but signals the bill’s scope: a statutory program aimed at measuring the fiscal and accountability costs of police misconduct.
Key definitions that set reporting boundaries
This subsection defines the terms that determine what must be reported. The definitions are intentionally broad—'allegation of misconduct' and 'misconduct' cover unlawful, tortious, and 'otherwise inappropriate' actions, while 'law enforcement agency' is defined to cover prevention, investigation, prosecution, and adjudication entities. Practically, these choices expand the pool of incidents captured and require agencies to decide how to code borderline incidents and internal administrative matters for reporting purposes.
Attorney General must inventory federal law enforcement agencies
The Attorney General has 90 days to identify the total number and names of federal law enforcement agencies and 120 days to publish that list online, with annual updates. That inventory is the program’s starting gate: agencies not on the published list are not subject to the federal reporting cadence, so the completeness and classification choices in this step materially affect coverage.
Annual collection and disclosure requirements for federal agencies
Federal agencies listed by the DOJ must collect detailed data on every judgment or settlement tied to misconduct and report it annually to the Attorney General under DOJ guidance. Required fields include demographics, timing, a granular allegation typology, personnel and agency actions, payment amounts, and payment sources (including the Judgment Fund). Agencies have 60 days after year end to file reports, and DOJ can grant a single 60‑day extension for good‑faith efforts. The first report must backfill any prior period data covered by the collection requirement.
Byrne JAG conditionality, finance disclosure, and enforcement
States and localities receiving Byrne JAG funds must collect substantially similar data beginning 120 days after enactment and submit it annually to DOJ. The bill compels extra financial transparency from subnational governments: reporting must break out how settlements were financed (general funds, law‑enforcement budgets, insurance, bonds, central risk pools) and insurers/pools must be accounted for. Noncompliance can trigger up to a 10% reduction in Byrne JAG and/or COPS on the Beat allocations for the current or subsequent fiscal year, and withheld funds are reallocated to jurisdictions that complied.
GAO study, DOJ reporting, and a public searchable database
After two full years of data, the Comptroller General will study participation, leading causes of judgments and settlements, aggregate and per‑agency spending, and policy links between agency actions and liability. Separately, DOJ must publish an annual report with recommendations and best practices and create a public, searchable database within one year (updated annually). The database excludes officer PII but centralizes otherwise dispersed settlement and payment‑source data for researchers, policymakers, and the public.
Privacy Act protections remain in force
The Act explicitly states it does not supersede the Privacy Act of 1974. That preserves existing privacy and access limitations and shapes what can appear in the public database—DOJ must balance transparency with statutory protections, which will drive implementation choices about redaction and data access.
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Explore Justice in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Civil rights organizations — Gain a standardized, nationwide data feed and public database to track patterns, support litigation or advocacy, and prioritize investigations based on documented settlements and payment patterns.
- Researchers and policy analysts — Access to granular, comparable data (including payment sources and dollar totals) will enable quantitative studies of liability, the fiscal effects of policing practices, and evaluations of reform interventions.
- Municipal budget and finance offices in compliant jurisdictions — Improved visibility into liability exposure helps long‑term budgeting, informs decisions on self‑insurance versus third‑party coverage, and can support efforts to reduce high‑cost incidents.
- Taxpayers and the public — A public, searchable database increases transparency about how much local and federal governments spend to resolve misconduct claims and where those dollars come from.
Who Bears the Cost
- Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies — Face new data‑collection, reporting, and recordkeeping costs and potential reputational harm when settlements and details are publicly aggregated.
- Smaller agencies and rural jurisdictions that rely on Byrne JAG funding — Risk losing up to 10% of critical grant dollars for noncompliance, and may struggle with the administrative burden of compiling the required finance and allegation detail.
- Municipalities and counties — May see increased pressure on general funds if disclosures show settlements financed from operating budgets; insurers and risk pools could reassess premiums based on newly available claims data.
- Department of Justice — Will absorb implementation costs to build and maintain the database, verify state submissions using open sources, and draft guidance and reports; those activities require staffing and systems.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central trade‑off is between transparency/fiscal accountability and the administrative, privacy, and fiscal harms that can follow disclosure: the bill forces visibility into the true costs and funding sources of misconduct, which can drive reform, but the same visibility can create incentives to underreport, impose burdens on small agencies, and reduce grant dollars for communities that rely on federal assistance.
The bill creates a high‑value national dataset, but it trades on assumptions that may complicate implementation. First, the definitions are broad, which improves capture but invites inconsistent coding across hundreds of agencies; differences in case management systems, local recordkeeping practices, and legal definitions of settlement types will generate comparability problems.
Second, requiring disclosure of payment sources (insurance, bonds, general funds) increases fiscal transparency but creates practical questions: insurers’ confidentiality clauses, complex indemnity arrangements, and bond amortization schedules complicate uniform reporting and may produce inconsistent fiscal snapshots.
The enforcement lever—reducing Byrne JAG or COPS funding by up to 10%—is blunt. It pressures compliance but risks harming public safety programs in under‑resourced jurisdictions that need the grants most.
Open‑source verification is a pragmatic check on reporting accuracy, yet it is uneven: media and court records are more accessible in some jurisdictions than others, which may bias DOJ cross‑checks. Finally, while the Act protects officer PII and preserves the Privacy Act, the aggregation of demographic and allegation data still risks misattributing systemic patterns to a small subset of officers or creating incentives for underreporting.
Implementation choices—how DOJ defines data fields, enforces quality control, and handles insurance information—will determine whether the dataset is useful or misleading.
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