Measures for Justice Launches Data Portal
ROCHESTER – NY – May 23, 2017 — Measures for Justice (MFJ) released a Data Portal that tracks how criminal cases are being handled at the county level from arrest to post-conviction.
The Data Portal offers unprecedented transparency into local justice systems by collecting and analyzing criminal justice data and presenting them at the county level.
The Portal allows users to review and compare performance data within and across states, and to break them down by race/ethnicity; sex; indigent status; age; offense type; offense severity; and attorney type.
“The data are a treasure trove for communities that will now have access to reliable, informative, and comprehensive data about their criminal justice systems,” said Amy Bach, President and Executive Director, Measures for Justice. “Our Portal is intended to be a starting point for conversations about how to address the multiple issues facing the criminal justice system.”
The Data Portal launches with data from over 300 counties in six states: Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Utah, North Carolina, and Washington.
In addition, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is joining other funders to help support Measures for Justice’s goal of measuring 20 states by 2020.
“It’s a sad reality that in today’s America there is no easy way to access the most basic criminal justice data from across the country. Better access to criminal justice data is important for informing efforts to make our communities safer and our criminal justice system fairer—after all, you can’t solve a problem if you don’t have the facts. We’re thrilled to be supporting Measures for Justice’s work.” – David Plouffe, President of Policy and Advocacy, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
The Data Portal comprises data that has been passed through 32 performance measures developed by some of the country’s most renowned criminologists and scholars. The measures address three primary objectives of criminal justice systems: Public Safety; Fair Process; Fiscal Responsibility.
“I can imagine a wide variety of uses for the data—the courts, the legislature, and law enforcement. It’s an extremely useful tool.” – Steve Leifman, Associate Administrative Judge for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court of Florida
The Data Portal has been six years in the making. The organization was founded in 2011 and, in addition to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, is funded with the support of Google.org, the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Pershing Square Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, and the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. For more information, please visit www.measuresforjustice.org.
About Measures for Justice
Measures for Justice (MFJ) is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization whose mission is to bring transparency to the criminal justice system from arrest to post-conviction at the county level. MFJ collects and analyzes criminal justice data from counties and displays them on a Data Portal that is free to the public.
About Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was launched in December 2015 by Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician and founder and CEO of The Primary School in East Palo Alto. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a new kind of philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing human potential and promoting equal opportunity through engineering, grant making, impact investing, policy and advocacy work. Initial areas of focus include science and education.
