The pursuit of justice in the United States hinges not only on laws and regulations, but also the evolution of criminal reform efforts to improve what is often perceived as a broken system. For too long, prosecutor's offices have operated in what has been perceived to be a "black box" - leaving communities unaware of how decisions are made, what work their prosecutor's office is doing daily, and how these decisions impact their daily lives. Fighting racial disparities in the criminal justice system's outcomes has been a driving force in efforts to bring transparency to the forefront.
Among those actively working for change are Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy’s Director of Prosecution Projects, Melba Pearson, and Associate Director of Prosecutorial Policy, Besiki Luka Kutateladze, who serve as co-managers of the Prosecutorial Performance Indicators (the PPIs), along with Don Stemen, Loyola University, and Rebecca Dunlea, University of Massachusetts Lowell. Within their network, they work with prosecutors from across 35+ offices nationwide to gather data that is used to create public facing prosecutorial dashboards building transparency within the criminal justice system.
In measuring their success, the PPIs measure their performance focused on three goals:
- Capacity & Efficiency – measuring the caseload distribution, case dismissals, and the timeline of processing cases across communities.
- Community Safety & Well-being – analyzing frequency of violent crimes, outreach of victims, and accessibility for community engagement.
- Fairness & Justice – analyzing frequency of hate crimes towards marginalized groups, discrepancies in sentencing among different ethnic groups, and enforcing accountability and integrity.
This March, they held their Bi-Annual PPI Conference at Florida International University, that gathered prosecutors, researchers, and funders to review the impact of their work. This session, they broke down the prosecutorial dashboards launched in Montgomery County in Maryland and Broward County in Florida (which stands as the first prosecutorial dashboard in South Florida) with the corresponding county state attorneys and opened the door for a conversation of AI integration within the world of prosecution, moderated by Besiki.
The team at PPI will continue to work hard with prosecutors in releasing more prosecutorial dashboards across different counties. The next PPI Conference will take place in the fall at Loyola University.
To view over 50 of their indicators and learn more about the PPIs, please visit prosecutorialperformanceindicator.org!
Interested in learning more about AI in prosecution, Besiki recently published an Op-Ed in Bloomberg Law.
By: Cesar Cabot