Community Advisory Board and Rochester Police Department Partner to Set, Track Data with New Platform
ROCHESTER, NY (September 4, 2024) – Measures for Justice (MFJ), a nonprofit that develops tools to help communities reshape the criminal justice system, is excited to announce that we have on-boarded a Community Advisory Board (CAB) for the data transparency initiative underway with the Rochester Police Department (RPD). The partnership between this board and the department will establish shared policy goals and track police data using MFJ’s public platform, Commons, a tool that makes it easier for local communities to get, track, and understand criminal justice data.
RPD is one of the first police departments in the country to deploy Commons and implement a new set of National Police Measures developed with input from community leaders and police experts nationwide. Last year, MFJ worked with the Monroe County, N.Y. District Attorney’s Office and community members to launch their own Commons platform. MFJ is also working with the West Sacramento Police Department in California.
“I strongly believe that better data enhances transparency and enables more informed decisions with both our traditional and non-traditional criminal justice partners, leading to improved outcomes for our community,” said Rochester Police Chief David Smith.
Commons is unique because it:
- is co-created with members of the community via a Community Advisory Board;
- includes a policy goal that is mutually agreed upon with the community;
- enables any user to easily filter data in a variety of ways including, but not limited to, race, age, sex, etc.; and
- includes data that is updated regularly.
The RPD CAB includes local community members with a diverse set of backgrounds, experiences and voices who are committed to partnering with RPD to co-create a policy goal.
The data and measures they will use to set these goals were informed by a Council of experts (policing council), the voices of community members and advocates across the county (roundtable summary report), and the perspectives of local residents in Rochester and West Sacramento. (listening session findings)
“As a community advocate, my goal is to ensure clear and transparent communication between the agencies that serve the communities I represent,” said Julio Jordan, RPD CAB Member.
As a collective, the CAB and RPD will be undertaking groundbreaking work to demonstrate how data transparency and collaboration can make evidence-based decision-making the norm.
“We believe the best way to enable communities to reshape a system is to help them understand as much about it as possible, through a rigorous, holistic overview of all the system’s moving parts. And the way to do that is with readily available and easily understandable data,” said Amy Bach, CEO and founder of Measures for Justice.
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About Measures for Justice
Measures for Justice is leading a movement to change the future of criminal justice by developing tools that help communities and the institutions that serve them reshape how the system works. Since 2011, Measures for Justice has worked with communities, courts, prosecutors, and police to shine a light on what criminal justice looks like nationwide; collaborated to standardize and improve criminal justice data nationwide; and created tools, provided services, and led research to help create a criminal justice system that is fully transparent, accessible, and accountable.
