Data and Transparency: Brooklyn District Attorney

Challenge:

The Justice 2020 Initiative was launched by Brooklyn District Attorney (DA) Eric Gonzalez in 2018 to increase community safety, fairness, and equal justice by transforming office culture to establish community-based alternatives as the default response and focus resources on the cases presenting the most harm—all while engaging the community as partners throughout the process. Those objectives demanded a range of approaches and shifts, including strategies to facilitate a culture of data-driven decision-making and transparency in the Office, which DA Gonzalez recognized as a critical component of both advancing effective reforms and being accountable to the public. In addition, since equity underpins every facet of the Justice 2020 plan, a systematic assessment was critical to uncovering where racial and ethnic disparities in prosecutorial decision-making existed, where they were most pronounced, and what factors drove them. With a data-driven process to develop those insights, DA Gonzalez could create informed and effective mitigation strategies.

Like many prosecutor’s offices, the Office has lagged behind other criminal justice agencies in building the data infrastructure needed to regularly monitor trends related to safety, incarceration, and other outcomes and actively use this information to promote accountability and inform decisions and practices. To advance this data-driven culture at all levels, with a particular eye toward advancing Justice 2020 strategies and goals, the Office prioritized a data and analytic capacity-building effort to inventory data systems, identify specific data challenges, and recommend ways the Office might enhance its infrastructure to support the goals of transparency and accountability. At the same time, the Office was committed to using that data to investigate equity in prosecutorial decision-making, providing a baseline for which to measure progress with newer reform efforts.

Approach:

Toward both of those ends, with funding from Arnold Ventures’ National Partnership for Pretrial Justice and the William T. Grant Foundation, the Brooklyn DA’s Office partnered with ISLG to launch a Data and Transparency Initiative comprising two phases of work. In the first phase, a one-year capacity-building project, ISLG helped the Office identify and implement measures to improve its ability to track, analyze, and apply the data that support its most important policy and practice goals. In line with the recommendations of the Data and Transparency subcommittee established by DA Gonzalez in the early planning stages of Justice 2020, this work began with a diagnostic of data, systems, and practices to identify whether and how existing capacity supported operational, measurement, and evaluation needs; what gaps existed; and what steps could be taken to fill those gaps. ISLG then delivered recommendations on the resources needed to implement the steps identified as most critical to informing robust decision-making among the Office’s prosecutors, and for monitoring and evaluating the Office’s highest priority questions, including those related to Justice 2020 progress and outcomes.

In the second phase of the project, ISLG launched a mixed-methods study to identify and explore disparities in prosecutorial decision-making, using the Office’s administrative data supplemented by a review of approximately 300 case files. The research is designed to establish a baseline understanding of what disparities may look like, against which Justice 2020 progress can be measured, and identify further points for intervention.The study focuses on five decision points where prosecutors have the most discretion and/or influence: case acceptance, charging, pretrial release and bail decisions, disposition and sentencing, and plea bargaining. By examining racial and ethnic disparities in a holistic way for the first time, the research will uncover the factors driving disparities in order to target mitigation strategies that promote equity across decision-making.

Progress:

ISLG kicked off Phase I of the project with a diagnostic assessment to evaluate the data challenges experienced by the Office, across staff levels and across various bureaus and units, to better understand data needs. Findings from that exercise were presented to the DA and his leadership team in February 2019, and an Implementation Committee was launched to help guide a planning process to put data and analytic capacity-building recommendations into practice based on Office priorities. Over several months, ISLG worked with the Implementation Committee and four sub-committees focused on the strategic roll-out of a new case management system, technology training and enhancements, reporting, and research and performance management. By fall 2019, ISLG provided the Office with a roadmap to continue implementation efforts, particularly as a new Research Director was hired and onboarded—a position that grew directly out of the diagnostic recommendations.

In October 2021, ISLG released a report detailing the findings from a study on racial and ethnic disparities across various points in the prosecutorial process. This study, Justice in Decision-Making, was the culmination of research drawing on the Office’s administrative data from 2016-mid 2019, in addition to a review of case files to supplement that analysis. An internal advisory group was convened to weigh in on project findings and ensure that the work was grounded in the context of office operations, policies, and practices. Additionally, ISLG outlined a set of high-level recommendations the office might consider to mitigate the racial and ethnic disparities identified through the analysis, and assist the Office in tracking similar outcomes as they move forward in their reform efforts.

Ultimately, this work will drive data-driven reforms that ensure both safety and fairness in justice, and allow the Brooklyn DA’s Office to serve as a model for building data-driven decision-making capacity within prosecutorial offices in other jurisdictions. 

Contact Jennifer Ferone, Associate Research Director, at Jennifer.Ferone@islg.cuny.edu for more information.