F R O M
T H E
S T A T E
A T T O R N E Y
An d re w H. Wa r re n - St at e At t o r n ey fo r t h e T h i r t e e n t h Ju d i c i a l Ci rc u i t
embracing data to improve
Criminal Justice
e’ve all heard the dispiriting adage about
“lies, damn lies, and statistics.” That
century-old quote sounds antiquated in
today’s era of big data, where number-
crunching supercomputers process
incomprehensible amounts of information to improve
decision-making and outcomes in almost every arena and
industry. Unfortunately, our criminal justice system has
largely managed to avoid the data revolution … until now.
This past session, the Florida Legislature passed a data
collection bill that aims to bring Florida’s criminal justice
system into the 21st century.
The sad reality is that there is a tremendous lack of
criminal justice data at the national, state, and local levels.
Federal and state governments have collected certain data
for years, but they have largely been limited to crime rates
and offense types. Starting July 1, 2018, Florida’s data
collection will be far more nuanced, making our state a
national leader through this ambitious transparency
endeavor. The new law requires criminal justice
stakeholders — State Attorneys, Public Defenders, Clerks
of Court, and the Department of Corrections — to
collect specific data, report it to the Florida Department
of Law Enforcement, and publish it online in a searchable
format for any and all to see.
The data sought is comprehensive: approximately 100
pieces of information covering, among other things, the
defendant, charges, bail, plea, and sentencing. The idea
to collect this information is not revolutionary, but
implementing the idea is.
The Legislature’s recent embrace of data mirrors the
data-driven solutions we have pursued since the
beginning of my administration in the State Attorney’s
Office. Of course, data-driven solutions require data.
Last year, we partnered with Measures for Justice, a
national organization whose goal is to collect and publish
prosecutorial data from across the United States, to make
sure that Hillsborough County was represented in that
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we must examine the data and use it to drive policies that increase
public safety, reduce recidivism, and promote fairness.
research. (In designing its data collection bill, the
Legislature also worked with Measures for Justice.)
We have also teamed up with the University of South
Florida’s Criminology Department to identify implicit
bias and other blind spots in how we charge juveniles.
Earlier this year, we were selected as one of only four
prosecutor’s offices in the nation to participate in a $1.7
million data research project with the MacArthur
Foundation and Florida International University to
increase effectiveness and fairness in how we prosecute
cases. These partnerships are critical in helping us
discover, to quote Donald Rumsfeld, the “known
unknowns” — the things we know we don’t know — and
the “unknown unknowns” — the things we don’t even
know we don’t know.
Whereas many prosecutors’ offices have historically
been reluctant to open their kimono for fear of what
others may see, we have taken the opposite approach. We
are willing to bare all for inspection — revealing the
good, the bad, and the ugly — not only to be completely
transparent but also to improve the work we do every day.
It has been said, “Ninety-nine percent of statistics only
tell 49 percent of the story.” We agree, which is why the
robust data collection and analysis that we are building is
only half the battle. Ultimately, we must examine the data
and use it to drive policies that increase public safety,
reduce recidivism, and promote fairness, which will
become the most important statistic of all.
SUMMER 2018
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HCBA LAWYER