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The Knight News Challenge accelerates media innovation by funding breakthrough ideas in news and information.

How might we make data work for individuals and communities?

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Data Justice

Opening up criminal justice data for a more fair and efficient system.

Photo of Ev Boyle
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In one sentence, describe your idea as simply as possible.

Working with local law enforcement, courts, academics, and policymakers, we will help to develop and implement a plan for making Los Angeles County a national leader in open criminal justice data. By opening and analyzing a broad cross-section of datasets – not just on arrests and crime, but also in areas like sentencing, recidivism, and mental health – LA can serve as a model for how to use criminal justice data to reduce crime and keep people out of prison.

Briefly describe the need that you're trying to address.

Crime reports are a pillar of municipal open data initiatives, but mapping crime is only one way that open data can contribute to safer cities. What’s missing from current open data efforts are more nuanced data that could shed light on disproportionality and other areas for improvement in the criminal justice system. This data exists, but is usually trapped in hard drives and PDFs. Our project works to make this data available in open formats in ways that benefit everyone involved.

What progress have you made so far?

In September 2015, we launched Civic Tech USC and released our first report, “Empowering the Public Through Open Data: Findings and Recommendations for City Leaders in Los Angeles County.” Our research for that report revealed that one of the largest, most important gaps in available government data is in the criminal justice system. That finding led us to conduct additional background research and begin devising a plan for addressing the problem.

What would be a successful outcome for your project?

In addition to releasing a report on criminal justice data in Los Angeles County, we will work with leaders in LA to make the region a national leader in open criminal justice data. Our goal is for Los Angeles to become a model, nationally and internationally, for using data to solve problems and improve public policy related to criminal justice.

Please list your team members and their relevant experience/skills.

Ev Boyle (hustle & pluck; http://twitter.com/evmonk)
Andrew Schrock (data analytics & design; http://twitter.com/aschrock)
Skye Featherstone (research & media; http://twitter.com/SkyeFeatherston)
Justin Chapman (research & data; http://lnkdin.me/p/justindchapman)

Great advisers like Nicco Mele (http://twitter.com/nicco), Debra Cleaver (http://twitter.com/debracleaver), Josh Goldstein (http://twitter.com/african_minute), Vyki Englert (http://twitter.com/vyki_e), Geoffrey Cowan (http://bit.ly/1PNZMEz), and Elizabeth Stewart (http://twitter.com/elizinla)

Where is your project located?

This proposal is a project of Civic Tech USC, a new initiative working at the intersection of technology, citizenship, and government. We are based at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles, CA. For more information and to read our 2015 report, "Empowering the Public Through Open Data," visit http://civictechusc.org and http://twitter.com/CivicTechUSC.
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ATTACHMENTS

CivicTechUSCOpenDataLACounty.pdf

Civic Tech USC's September 2015 report on open government data.

2 comments

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Photo of Erin

You mention that a lot of data is trapped on hard drives or pdfs. What's your plan for obtaining this data?

It's unclear to me what the end product of the project is. Is the intention to release a report on the data you've collected or is there another platform you're planning on building to share the data with the public?

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Photo of Ev

Erin,

Thanks for reading and considering our proposal.

The short answers to your two questions are:

1) Working with agencies that collect LA criminal justice data (the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and/or the LAPD), and other experts in this area, we plan to pilot a more efficient and transparent system of tracking criminal justice outcomes. Our first product/outcome would be to convene a roundtable with law enforcement, policy makers, and academics to discuss how we can more effectively track and release criminal justice data in Los Angeles County.

2) Our report would be the end product of this broader initiative and would provide guidance not only to stakeholders in LA but also to other cities and counties around the country so that they can replicate the work we hope to do here.

Additional details:

- We aren’t looking to independently obtain and release the data itself. We would provide a home for this project but wouldn’t do the work on our own. The crux of our proposal is to work closely with the relevant stakeholders across LA County to pilot a new system for capturing and releasing crime data. In other words, we would be a neutral, academic consultant to the city and/or county of LA to help re-think and re-organize criminal justice data, make it more transparent and useful, and comply with both the new statewide OpenJustice initiative led by CA Attorney General Kamala Harris and the ambitious new crime reporting and racial bias legislation (AB 953) signed by CA Governor Jerry Brown at the beginning of this month.

- We have a track record of working on open data initiatives with government partners and of forging deep connections and working relationships with academics and policy-makers across the University of Southern California community, the county, and the state. For instance, for our previous work on human trafficking interventions using data and new technology, we worked with the Office of the Attorney General in CA, the U.S. Department of Justice, and others.

- For this project, we would seek counsel and explore partnerships with entities including but not limited to the LAPD and/or the LASD, as well as the LA District Attorney’s Office and Office of the Attorney General in California, the UCLA Center for Policing Equity, the Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at Berkeley, the Data & Society Research Institute, the CJCJ California Sentencing Institute, and others.

- We would also work with our friends at the U.S. City Open Data Census to expand their coverage of criminal justice data in LA and nation-wide.

- Knight grants are so competitive that I've learned it doesn't make sense to invest too much in the first round. We've had a few preliminary conversations, but if you decide this is an idea deserving more exploration, we would immediately and aggressively start outreach to potential partners, schedule conversations with experts, analyze the available criminal justice data to identify possibilities and limitations, and so on.

- If we found after this all this that our goals are neither realistic nor achievable in the short term, or that law enforcement agencies are unwilling to work with us, we would withdraw our proposal. We've done some preliminary research and outreach, but we need to spend at least another couple weeks digging into this before we know how viable it is and what the best way to tackle the problem is.

Does this help to answer your questions? I'm happy to provide more detail and clarification so just let me know. And thanks again for reading and considering!

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