About Us

Is Measures for Justice nonpartisan?

Measures for Justice (MFJ) is a nonpartisan nonprofit and we are not affiliated with any political party or organization- our only agenda is criminal justice data transparency. We want the public and policymakers to have the high-quality data they need to make decisions that affect their communities. 

What exactly does MFJ do?

We help communities, including the institutions that serve them, reshape how the criminal justice system works using high-quality data. We engage with local communities – including prosecutors, courts, police, and the public- to make high-quality criminal justice data transparent and accessible through our suite of data solutions, leading to greater system accountability.

Why is high-quality data important? What’s the value of working with MFJ?

In the United States, there’s no one justice system, no one way of measuring justice, and no one place you can go to find data about what is happening in your community. Because justice happens primarily at the local level – across more than 3,000 individual counties – criminal justice data is incredibly hard to get, incredibly hard to understand, and incredibly hard to use. Without high quality data, it’s hard for communities to rally for change or make informed decisions.

Our vision is a world in which the criminal justice system is fully transparent, accessible, and accountable. To get there, we help make criminal justice data easier to get, easier to understand, and easier to use.

What do we mean by Community?

At MFJ, community includes all community members and the public institutions that serve them. We refer to “community” in a legal and geographical context and define it as follows:

“Community refers to a group of people or a society living and working together in a specific local area, or a group of people with similar rights or interests. Community means neighborhood or locality.”

What is Community Engagement?

Community Engagement is the intentional practice of:
• Collaborating with community members,
• Creating partnerships throughout the community and,
• Leveraging a community’s resources, such as using community input for decision-making, for the purpose of serving that community in a sustainable way that fulfills its needs.

Measures for Justice is inclusive in our approach to community engagement and is  a committed member of the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2).

Where does MFJ get its funding?

MFJ is philanthropically supported by major criminal justice and technology foundations, family foundations, and a growing base of individual donors.

Criminal Justice Data Solutions and Community Offerings

What data solutions does MFJ offer? How can I get in touch with MFJ to talk about your offerings?

Whether your goal is to improve data, use data, or make data available to the public, we can help. 

Working with high-quality data is a vital first step on the path to change and transparency. Depending on your goals, we have data-driven solutions that prioritize top-notch data quality. 

• Groundwork is a suite of offerings designed to meet you where you’re at by enabling agencies to assess and improve the quality of their criminal justice data.
• Commons is a community-driven data tool that helps shape criminal justice policy. This tool makes high-quality  criminal justice data both transparent and actionable -while enabling policy goal-setting- fostering accountability within local communities. 
• Our Community Engagement services bridge the gap between data and change. We engage communities to leverage data effectively, offering outreach, bridge-building, and data literacy education. Through community engagement, we enable better data-driven decision-making by all.
• The All In network is a community made up of individual stakeholders, community partners, and criminal justice agencies working together to advance data transparency, accessibility, and accountability in the criminal justice system.

Are you interested in having a conversation with Measures for Justice about your Agency’s data? Fill out our contact form and one of our team members will be in touch with you shortly.

What determines how many different things we can measure?

We determine which things we can measure based on what data are available and reliable in your county. Learn more about our process for developing measures.

What is Commons?

Commons is a community-driven data tool that helps shape criminal justice policy. You can learn more about Commons here.

What makes Commons so unique for driving change?

1. It’s your platform. Commons brings the public and their public servants together to prioritize what data should be made available.
2. It’s easy to use. The platform is user-friendly, accessible, and designed to ensure the data can be understood and put to work.
3. It’s data you can trust. Measures for Justice is a neutral and seasoned third party that handles all of the data processing pieces of this work. You can be sure the data are valid, reliable, and trustworthy.
4. It’s updated and relevant. Data on the Commons platform is updated on a regular basis. 
5. It’s policy focused. The platform features a policy goal co-created amongst community members and leaders that can be tracked over time, with new goals added as previous goals are met. 

How long will the Commons platform remain active after it’s launched?

The Commons platform can remain active for as long as an agency would like. The agency can continue its partnership with MFJ annually with a maintenance agreement to provide updated data.

How is Commons data stored?

The data is stored in a secure cloud-hosted data warehouse administered by MFJ. The data is segregated into data that can be made available to the public and private data that is only available to the Agency.

Data Security

What practices do you use around data security?

MFJ provides aggregated data at the county level available to anyone, but the data is anonymized and cleaned  before being made available. 

The data will not be used for any other purposes, political or otherwise. 

How does MFJ keep data secure?

We have a dedicated compliance director who works directly with six departmental compliance liaisons to ensure adherence to our policies and procedures. Alongside the Chief People and Administrative Officer, the compliance director provides comprehensive program oversight. 

Our commitment to security includes planned annual third-party audits conducted by cyber-security specialists from iSecure, leveraging modern AWS cloud infrastructure, and adhering to NIST and CIS best practices.  Additionally, all MFJ mobile devices and laptops are managed using Jamf Protect, providing an added layer of security and management.

Why should I trust MFJ with my data?

We take data security seriously and are committed to protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all information entrusted to us by our partners, employees, and the communities where we work. We recognize the importance of maintaining the highest standards of data security to safeguard sensitive information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. 

The only data we share publicly is county-level data on our Commons platforms. Our technical data processing removes and decouples all Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) and PII (Personally Identifiable Information) well before any of the data we handle is published publicly. All data, including PII, is never shared or sold to third parties and is all treated with the same level of dedicated security measures.

Additionally, all data is delivered to us via secured file transfer protocols.

Does MFJ follow CJIS standards?

Yes. Our compliance program is founded on adopting and practicing all the applicable CJIS policies. All MFJ employees are required to complete annual CJIS training, ensuring that everyone in the organization is well-versed in these critical policies and procedures.  Additionally all MFJ employees that work with CJIS data are required to complete the FBI’s CJIS fingerprinting protocol.

Does MFJ have a data security compliance program?

Yes, we have a compliance program dedicated to keeping data secure, with a compliance program based on 10 critical focus areas. 

Does MFJ get a security rating from a 3rd party provider?

Yes, and our rating is “minimal vulnerability and exposure”.

Does MFJ do yearly PEN testing?

Yes, we completed PEN tenting during summer of 2023 and Spring 2024.  Both were completed with the rating of minimal vulnerability and exposure.

Does Measures for Justice provide data security and compliance training to its employees?

Yes, we require mandatory CJIS annual training and one hour of cyber-security awareness training for all of our employees.