New City of Toledo Prosecutor’s Office Dashboard highlights Success of Domestic Violence Unit
By Samantha Parker, Research Associate
Data and transparency can be a key tool for prosecutors’ offices looking to show policymakers and the public the impact of their work. The City of Toledo Prosecutor’s Office partnered with our Prosecutorial Data Collaborative to do this and has launched a public dashboard promoting transparency—and highlighting the success of their new Domestic Violence Unit.
Prosecutors often wield significant discretion in who gets charged, what they’re charged with, and the gravity of the potential sentence. Given this responsibility, prosecutors' offices are increasingly facing calls for higher degrees of transparency and use of data in their decision-making.
In pursuit of this, CUNY ISLG and the Prosecutorial Performance Indicators (PPIs) launched the Prosecutorial Data Collaborative in 2024, a one-stop-shop to help prosecutors' offices develop concrete, practical strategies for building data and analytic capacity and sustaining it over time. This July, the City of Toledo Prosecutor’s Office (CPTO)—a Collaborative Partner—took a significant step toward these goals.
“This data dashboard makes information about the work we do, the cases we handle, and the public we serve more transparent and understandable for all.”
- Rebecca Facey, Chief Prosecutor, City of Toledo
“This data dashboard makes information about the work we do, the cases we handle, and the public we serve more transparent and understandable for all,” said Rebecca Facey, Chief Prosecutor for the City of Toledo. “We want the community to have access to this information and a better understanding of the work we do in the Prosecutor’s Office.”
The CPTO joined the Collaborative in 2o24 with a focus on transparency and a desire to gain deeper insights into the practices and outcomes of its new Domestic Violence (DV) Unit. Through this partnership, this month, it launched the City of Toledo Prosecutor’s Office (CTPO) Dashboard. The dashboard provides accessible, timely data for city officials, policymakers, and the public to gain insight on CTPO’s work and explore trends in the cases filed and disposed in the Office through the first quarter of 2025. Dashboard users can explore the data and apply filters for race, age, gender, and offense type. This puts users in control to investigate trends of interest and explore their own questions.
Measuring the Impact of the New Domestic Violence Unit
Using data analysis from Collaborative work, the CTPO also released a Domestic Violence Data Story, which tracks the success of their new DV Unit. Since she assumed the role in January 2023, Chief Prosecutor Rebecca Facey prioritized strengthening the CTPO’s handling of domestic violence cases, launching the DV Unit later that year. The Unit has dedicated attorneys who are specially trained to prosecute domestic violence cases; by dedicating more resources and staff, the Unit allows its attorneys better time and flexibility to investigate complex domestic violence cases and serve victims.
The Data Story highlights the impact of the DV Unit, comparing cases from 2022-2023 with those from 2024, the first full year of its operation. The findings demonstrate that the CTPO is securing more convictions and resolving cases more quickly. The Data Story lives on its own page within the dashboard, allowing viewers to dig into the details while also understanding domestic violence cases in the broader context of the CTPO’s overall work. The Data Story has helped the Office communicate the success of the DV Unit to City of Toledo government.
As a smaller office of less than 15, building this kind of data tool is no small feat. At the beginning of the project, CTPO had limited data capacity; throughout the partnership, Chief Prosecutor Facey remained committed to making data on CTPO’s work visible and understandable to the public, and this dashboard now demonstrates that meaningful transparency is possible for offices of any size. By sharing data publicly and using it to examine priority areas, CTPO is helping to improve transparency, encouraging informed conversations about the system, and providing a stronger foundation for future decision-making.
“Transparency and accountability are essential to maintaining public trust in the criminal legal system,” said Jennifer Ferone, Deputy Research Director at CUNY ISLG. “Our work with the City Prosecutor’s Office demonstrates how even a small team can drive meaningful change by prioritizing accountability, both internally and within the community, and how stronger data capacity can inform policy, improve practice, and support sound decision-making to strengthen operations.”
“Our work with the City Prosecutor’s Office demonstrates how even a small team can drive meaningful change by prioritizing accountability, both internally and within the community, and how stronger data capacity can inform policy, improve practice, and support sound decision-making to strengthen operations.”
- Jennifer ferone, cuny ISLG Deputy Research DIrector
Photo by Zenstratus on Adobe Stock.