Yolo D.A. offering up first-in-nation online access to data on criminal prosecutions
In a bid to make decisions on who is prosecuted for crimes in Yolo County more transparent, District Attorney Jeff Reisig and a criminal justice non-profit group are unveiling a new website Tuesday offering access to a trove of data on race, age, gender and other information related to criminal cases.
The new site, dubbed “Commons” and available online beginning Tuesday morning, is designed to allow the public to access information dating back to 2016 and study anything from the length of time a case takes to complete to how frequently defendants of one race are charged compared to other races.
“I’ve been frustrated for my entire career as the district attorney with the lack of readily available, accurate data from California’s criminal justice agencies, and that goes all the way to the top, to the attorney general’s office,” Reisig said Monday. “I decided I could do my part in being more transparent with the data.
“The data belongs to the people. It’s the only way we can have truly informed conversations about criminal justice reform.”
Reisig’s office teamed with Rochester, N.Y.-based Measures for Justice, paying about $20,000 and turning over information to the group for what it says is the first site in the nation to provide access to such an amount of data.
“There is probably a lot of anxiety that some in law enforcement might have in turning over all their data to a third-party and saying, ‘Here you go,’” Reisig said.
But he added that the decision comes after regular meetings with members of the office’s Multicultural Community Council to offer up information available electronically since Reisig transformed the Yolo D.A.’s office into a paperless operation in 2012.
“I’m already using it,” Reisig said. “I’m able to quickly dive in on, let’s say, cases rejected by a prosecutor,” he said. “And I can immediately go through agency by agency and see how many did I receive from the agencies and how many did I file and how many did I reject.
“So if I see in one particular agency there’s a very high rejection rate, then that begs the question, what’s going on? Are we rejecting them because of investigations that aren’t complete? Or are there some troubling issues perhaps that we need to look at.”
The site does not provide information on individual cases, but anyone with access to the internet can access the site and study, for instance, how often cases for certain drug offenses are filed against defendants of color versus white defendants, he said.
The site also offers individuals the ability to flag problem areas and with one click send their concerns to lawmakers, the media or simply post it to social media.
“We’re really excited about this,” said Fiona Maazel, communications director for Measures for Justice. “The goal is to bring it to prosecutors’ offices all over the country.”
The data is being provided as law enforcement agencies nationwide grapple with criminal justice reforms efforts - and as the trial of fired Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin plays out on national television daily nearly a year after George Floyd died while Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck.
Tessa Smith, chair of the county’s multicultural council and a Black woman, said the data “is going to be a way for us to keep the conversations on the rails.”
“It’s going to show where the disparities are, and in that way you can be surgical in your approach to real solutions,” Smith said, adding that the involvement of Measures for Justice as an independent group lends credibility to the information Reisig provided.
“They’re independent, so if there’s not credible or confirming data they’re not going to put it in there,” she said.
Greg Totten, chief executive officer of the California District Attorneys Association and a former Ventura County D.A., said there may be district attorneys who are not willing to provide such information to Measures for Justice, but added that providing accurate data to prosecutors on how they are doing their jobs “can be used to make wise decisions.”
“Jeff’s a cutting-edge kind of guy from a data standpoint,” Totten said. “He’s one of the leaders in California, if not the country, because he’s not afraid of the data.
“He wants to be as transparent as possible.”
Reisig, who is slated to become CDAA president in July, said his office also is working on a plan to become the first D.A.’s office in the nation to make decisions on filing cases essentially color blind.
Reisig said he is working with Stanford University researchers to redact investigative reports so that a suspect’s race is not readily apparent and cannot influence a decision on whether to file a case.
“The tool that they’re building will scrub the race of the defendant and the name,” he said, adding that he hopes to begin introducing that program in May. “You won’t see the surname at all, you won’t get any information about the location.
“Then the prosecutor reviews the police reports in this race-blind module and makes a charging decision blind, without seeing any of the racial information.”