Community Engagement at MFJ: an Interview with Precious Freeman, VP of National Engagement

At Measures for Justice, our community engagement services bridge the gap between data and change, fostering accountability and promoting accessible, transparent data. We empower communities to utilize their data effectively through outreach, bridge-building, and data literacy education. These efforts enable better data-driven decision-making and more informed communities.

We chatted with Precious Freeman, our VP of National Engagement, to discuss more about the engagement team at MFJ.

Can you define engagement in the context of the work we do?

Community engagement, for me, means “with, for, and together.” It’s what happens when leaders, or those in power, humble themselves enough to work with the public, making space for the people they represent and lead. Meaningful community engagement is when that space is so safe that those voices can be brave enough to speak up and empowered enough to work together with their leaders. 

That last part is where Measures for Justice comes in. We partner with communities to cultivate that safe space, a common ground where they can work together towards the changes they wish to see. 

What makes engagement in this context different? 

When we bring people to the table around data, I think we have a responsibility to make sure that they are informed enough to really participate in a way that’s meaningful. And so that’s why the data literacy work that we’re starting to roll out is super important, because we’ve seen people who really want to hold their agency leaders accountable, but who find it difficult just to sit through the conversations about the data elements and how those data elements contribute to possible policy areas. 

You shouldn’t have to be an expert to use data as a basis for accountability. If we were bringing folks together as focus groups just to hear their opinions, or to give us feedback, we could high-five ourselves a lot quicker. Like you get the people there and you let them speak their truth to those who are in power–you walk away feeling like you’ve done something. It’s a lot different when you’re bringing people together and they have to understand what they’re seeing so that they can contribute in a meaningful way. So there’s a bigger burden to what we’re doing, I think. 

What else makes this work hard? 

For starters, the data doesn’t always support a person’s lived experience. 

So if you have a Community Advisory Board (CAB) of 15 people, that’s a pretty big CAB but it’s still a very small segment of the population. And so even if those 15 people have experienced the same thing, the data may not support what’s happening more broadly in their community. It’s the same for the agencies. They know what they’ve seen. They may not feel that they treat one group of people differently from another group of people. And then they see these disparities in their data, and they have to reckon with that, to sit in that. 

I’ve seen them go: How is this possible because we’re really and truly not trying to do this? Everyone looks at the data and is surprised by what they see. So that’s the difficult part. I don’t want anybody to leave their lived experiences at the door and come to the table as if nothing has ever happened. Because that’s not real. But I do want people making space just to sit with the data and wrap their mind around it, process it, and then figure out where to go from there. 

What is your best-case scenario for the end of this work? What do you think the impact can be? 

If we’ve done things right, people understand not only how to look at the data and understand the data but how to communicate with the data, as well. If we’ve done things right, data transparency is just the start for communities; they keep going after our work is done, using data to have tough conversations, to demand accountability or, for agencies, to hold themselves accountable. 

If you would like to continue the conversation around driving change in your community, we encourage you to sign up for more information about All In– our community-based network with the goal of creating greater accountability in the criminal justice systems nationwide.