A bill passed by Congress last week and pending signature by President Barack Obama would require states to report the deaths of people of all genders and races held in policy custody.

The Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 mandates that states that receive federal criminal justice assistance grants must report all deaths that occur in law enforcement custody, including while a person is being detained or arrested. The act would also require the report to include gender and race of those who died.

The act was sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) and was passed just before the weekend when tens of thousands of people marched and rallied in New York City and Washington, D.C. against police brutality and in solidarity with the families who lost members to police violence like Mike Brown, John Crawford III, Eric Garner and Tamil Rice, to name the most recent deaths.

The bill also mandates that federal law enforcement agencies annually gather and report these deaths to the U.S. attorney general, who in turn has two years to analyze the data, determine if and how it can be used to reduce the number of such deaths, and file a report to Congress.

The bill has the backing of groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples, who argue it will increase accountability and transparency.

Up to now, FBI Uniform Crime Reports rely on police departments for reporting and only tallies "justifiable" homicides by police. Police departments do report, however, how many police died in the line of duty and who was responsible. But absent are any statistics on how many police officers are disciplined for excessive force or indicted, and few numbers on the number of people who died while in police custody or being arrested.

Congress has tried to enact similar laws before. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994 mandated the Department of Justice to gather, report and publish data of excessive force annually but the act was not enforced and the responsibility for gathering and reporting fell to a professional police organization which only the maintained the database up to 2001, according to Mother Jones.

The bill passed last week is the re-authorization of the original act, passed in 2000, initially created in reaction to prison confinement deaths, but accomplished little and by 2006 the Justice Department had not produced a single report.  

"Hopefully there will be better compliance and enforcement than existed then, and also more cooperation," Blumenthal told Mother Jones. "There's certainly more awareness now about the importance of this data, and much more focus on it."