Harris said the initiative is part of “a whole new way of doing business in government, which is adopting technology in a way that improves transparency.”
OpenJustice will make large amounts of criminal justice data available to the public with an overall goal of improving safety, strengthening trust, enhancing government accountability, and informing public policy. It will consist of two components: a Dashboard that spotlights key criminal justice indicators with user-friendly visualization tools and an open data portal that publishes raw data from the California Department of Justice’s statewide repository of criminal justice data sets.
“This initiative puts forward a common set of facts, data and goals so that we can hold ourselves accountable and improve public safety,” said Harris. “The California Department of Justice is proud to join with many in the law enforcement community to make our work more transparent.”
Harris was joined at the announcement by Congresswoman Karen Bass, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and University of California Berkeley Professor Steven Raphael.
The OpenJustice Dashboard includes three data sets: (1) Law Enforcement Officers Killed or Assaulted in the Line of Duty; (2) Deaths in Custody, including arrest-related deaths; and (3) Arrests and Bookings. For each metric, the dashboard features interactive Web tools that allow the public to explore these key criminal justice indicators over time and across jurisdictions.
To view all of the data released, visit OpenJustice.
This article was originally published on TechWire.
