Prosecutors are expected to take proactive, engaged responses to community problems, reduce disparities in justice outcomes, build greater trust through community engagement, and increase prosecutorial transparency and accountability. This requires robust data-driven prosecutorial work. The Colorado Lab, in partnership with the Prosecutorial Performance Indicators Project, is working with District Attorneys’ (DA) Offices from across the state to develop internal and external facing data dashboards—designed to assist offices with tracking their progress toward greater efficiency, effectiveness, and fairness through data.
Each of the eight pilot sites has created an internal workgroup with representatives from various parts of the office, including deputy DAs, victim witness staff, investigators, administrative staff, and public information officers. Workgroups are facilitating office-wide communication and identifying the data points most important to support internal operations and external transparency.
District Attorney Alexis King (left) and PPI’s Melba Pearson (right) discuss community outreach strategies.
In November, we facilitated the first cross-jurisdiction learning meeting with elected DAs and key representatives from each pilot site. The meeting provided an opportunity for offices to hear from, connect with, and learn from each other.
Sites shared internal communication strategies, including how to solicit input and feedback from staff and keep them informed as development of the dashboard progresses. They discussed how to advance impactful community engagement to ensure this work is both informed by and meets the expectations of each District’s community. The group also identified opportunities to work together to tackle common data challenges, such as tracking diversion data and pretrial information.
The work of the pilot offices will lay the foundation to support statewide scale, with the aim of launching dashboards in all of Colorado’s judicial districts. The leadership of these pilot sites is supporting Colorado in its goal to improve data-informed, statewide prosecutorial decision-making.
Stay informed about the development of Prosecutorial Dashboards and progress toward meeting Colorado’s goal of data-informed, prosecutorial decision-making. Sign up here to receive periodic updates, including resources and tools.
To learn more about the Prosecutorial Dashboards project, contact Dr. Lauren Gase.