New Criminal Justice Data Initiative in Los Angeles

In partnership with Microsoft and the USC Safe Communities Institute, the Neighborhood Data for Social Change (NDSC), a project of the USC Price Center for Social Innovation, has launched the NDSC Criminal Justice Data Initiative.  Through the project, USC staff will collect, aggregate, and disseminate neighborhood level criminal justice data for select communities across Los Angeles County.

The NDSC Criminal Justice Data Initiative will provide users with a detailed and nuanced understanding of key indicators to track criminal justice trends within specific Los Angeles neighborhoods. The initiative will start with a selection of data focused on front-end criminal justice interactions, such as rates of arrest, citizen complaints, police officer turnover rate, school-based arrests, and police incidents of force, among others. Further, the initiative will allow users to better understand how criminal justice data interacts with trends from other critical policy areas, including: homelessness, education, housing, jobs, and economic development, among others.

In addition to adding neighborhood-level criminal justice data to the platform, the initiative will host a series of community trainings and convenings, bringing together representatives from local law enforcement agencies, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and other civic actors, to provide important opportunities for dialogue and shared learning across agencies and within the community. Lastly, the initiative will produce a series of data stories designed to illuminate the public safety trends, challenges, and opportunities facing Los Angeles County communities and neighborhoods. The initiative will hold its first convening in August 2019, and publish neighborhood-level criminal justice data on the NDSC platform in December 2019. To stay up to date on the NDSC Criminal Justice Data Initiative, follow @NDSC_LA and la.myneighborhooddata.org. 

The NDSC Criminal Justice Data Initiative will also be coordinating with NNIP on the project “Catalyzing Community Criminal Justice Reform with Data.” This project seeks to better understand the local criminal justice data and advocacy landscape and encourage more local data organizations to bring their talents to bear on these issues.