Open Justice

LOS ANGELES -- Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced the launch of OpenJustice, a first-of-its-kind criminal justice open data initiative that will release unprecedented data while being interactive and easy to use. The tool consists of two components: a Dashboard that spotlights key criminal justice indicators with user-friendly visualization tools and an Open Data Portal that publishes raw data from the California Department of Justice’s statewide repository of criminal justice datasets.

The Attorney General was joined at the announcement by Congresswoman Karen Bass, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, and University of California Berkeley Professor Steven Raphael.

“Being “Smart on Crime” means measuring our effectiveness in the criminal justice system with data and metrics,” said Attorney General Harris. “This initiative puts forward a common set of facts, data and goals so that we can hold ourselves accountable and improve public safety. The California Department of Justice is proud to join with many in the law enforcement community to make our work more transparent.”

OpenJustice embraces transparency in the criminal justice system to strengthen trust, enhance government accountability, and inform public policy. Recent events in California and across the nation have highlighted the need for an important conversation to take place between law enforcement & the communities we are sworn to protect.

The Dashboard includes three important data sets that tell part of the story of the relationship between law enforcement and communities: (1) Law Enforcement Officers Killed or Assaulted in the Line of Duty; (2) Deaths in Custody, including arrest-related deaths; and (3) Arrests & Bookings.  For each metric, the Dashboard features interactive web tools that allow the public to explore these key criminal justice indicators over time and across jurisdictions. 

The Open Data Portal is an online repository of downloadable criminal justice data in raw form available to the public. This tool will enable researchers, civic coders, and journalists to help tackle seemingly intractable problems in the criminal justice system.  As part of the initiative, Attorney General Harris is expanding her work with law enforcement to improve reporting by eliminating unnecessary requirements and modernizing data reporting processes.

OpenJustice builds on Attorney General Kamala D. Harris’s leadership deploying 21st century “smart on crime” approaches to improve public safety.  As California’s Chief Law Enforcement Officer, Attorney General Harris has worked to embed new technology into the DNA of the Department of Justice and law enforcement agencies across the state.  This has involved cutting-edge SmartJustice tools including a web platform for law enforcement that integrates multiple state and local databases to provide aggregated criminal justice information, as well as a mobile portal so officers have access in the field at their fingertips. She has also championed using data to measure outcomes in public education and understand their connections to the criminal justice system.

Attorney General Harris has also taken several steps to strengthen the trust between law enforcement and California communities. She directed a 90-day Review of her Division of Law Enforcement’s policies on use of force and implicit bias, convened the state’s law enforcement leaders to share best practices through her 21st Century Policing Working Group, created the first POST-certified course on Procedural Justice and Implicit Bias in the U.S., and developed a pilot body-worn camera policy within the Department of Justice.

In the coming months, the Dashboard will expand to spotlight more metrics from across the justice system and a broad array of datasets will be released to foster accountability and trust.

Below are key finding from the Justice Dashboard:

Law Enforcement Officers Killed or Assaulted

• Since 1980, there has been an average of approximately 10 law enforcement officer deaths reported per year; 180 deaths resulted from unlawful incidents and 150 were accidental.
• In 2014, there were 14 deaths of law enforcement officers, which is an uptick from the previous 5-year average of approximately 8 deaths per year.
• Since 1980, 1 in 10 officers on the street were assaulted yearly. In that period, there have been over 280,000 assaults against law enforcement officers reported, or about 8,000 per year.  There are approximately 77,000 sworn officers in California in recent years, which has grown from 40,000 in 1980.

Death in Custody

• There were 6,837 deaths in custody reported between 2005 and 2014; an average of approximately 685 per year.
• Approximately 61 percent of deaths resulted from natural causes. The next leading cause of death is homicides by law enforcement at 14 percent, followed by suicide at 10 percent
• Over half of deaths in custody (~55%) were reported by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (“CDCR”) followed by county sheriffs (~23%) and local police (~15%).
• Manner of death differed considerably across agency type:  Deaths reported by police were primarily homicides (nearly 70 percent), while sheriffs and CDCR reported a large proportion of deaths due to natural causes and suicide; 17% of deaths in jails were suicides.

Arrests & Bookings

• Over the past 30 years reported property and violent crimes have dropped by half.
• The arrest rate peaked in 1989; since then misdemeanor arrests rates have been falling steadily and felony arrests rates have dropped slightly.
• Men are roughly 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than women.
• There are large racial/ethnic disparities in arrest rates that hold across men and women. African Americans are the most likely to be arrested at any age, most notably between 18 and 40. Asians have the lowest arrest rates. 

To view all of the data released today, visit OpenJustice (http://openjustice.doj.ca.gov).

LOS ANGELES - Attorney General Kamala D. Harris will hold a press conference at 11:30 a.m. to unveil a first-of-its-kind criminal justice open data initiative that will release unprecedented data while being interactive and easy to use. The new data-driven initiative embraces transparency in the criminal justice system to strengthen trust, enhance government accountability, and inform public policy.  

A livestream of the press conference will be available at https://oag.ca.gov. 

WHO:

Attorney General Kamala D. Harris
Congresswoman Karen Bass
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck
Steven Raphael, Professor of Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley 

WHEN:

Wednesday, September 2 at 11:30 a.m. 

WHERE:

California Attorney General’s Office
Ronald Reagan Building
300 S. Spring Street (between 3rd and 4th Streets)
Los Angeles, CA 90013 

NOTE:

This event is open to credentialed media only. 

SAN FRANCISCO -- Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today joined San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr to launch the California Department of Justice’s JusticeMobile app.

JusticeMobile is a mobile app that gives law enforcement agents, for the first time, secure and immediate access to state and federal criminal justice information. Until now, officers have had to use a phone or radio to contact personnel to obtain this information.

JusticeMobile was tested over the past five months by more than 600 San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) officers. Now, JusticeMobile is being rolled out to all SFPD officers, giving them access to internal SFPD, California DOJ and federal law enforcement databases. Justice Mobile will soon be available to law enforcement agencies across the state. The Los Angeles Police Department plans to equip 3,600 officers with the technology.

“We have mobile apps for everything from banking to board games on our phones. But, incredibly, law enforcement hasn’t had the tools to access important criminal justice information on handhelds and tablets until now,” said Attorney General Harris. “JusticeMobile is a quantum leap forward for public and peace officer safety, and it demonstrates our commitment to facilitating the adoption of new technology by law enforcement. I thank Mayor Lee and Chief Suhr for their partnership on this important project.”

In San Francisco, the Attorney General’s office partnered with SFPD’s Technology Division, the Mayor’s Office and technology companies through the San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology and Innovation (sf.citi).

“San Francisco’s men and women in uniform need 21st Century tools to keep our city safe,” said Mayor Lee. “This is a game changer. Under the leadership of Attorney General Harris, SFPD and sf.citi, the JusticeMobile smartphones give officers on the streets instant access to law enforcement data where information in real time counts. The City’s violent crime rates are now at historic lows and implementing innovative crime prevention strategies like this will help keep San Francisco as one of the safest big cities in America.”

“Talk about loving when a plan comes together, and I want to acknowledge the vision of Mayor Lee, Attorney General Kamala D. Harris, the Police Commission, and sf.citi in moving this initiative forward,” said SFPD Chief Greg Suhr. “That vision, coupled with the tenacity of SFPD CIO Susan Giffin and her award winning team, San Francisco will be a safer place because it’s a smarter place. This is the force multiplier SFPD has been working toward. In this case, some of San Francisco’s finest citizens came together to give ‘San Francisco’s Finest’ a 21st century tool that will go a long way towards making the City the safest big city in the country.”

JusticeMobile employs many rigorous security standards, including: strong password requirements, a Virtual Private Network requiring two-factor authorization, encryption, limits on downloads and backup/syncing, and prohibiting copying or screen captures.

JusticeMobile is also being used on a pilot basis to keep illegal firearms out of the hands of dangerous criminals. DOJ agents are using JusticeMobile on their iPads to check potential gun buyers at weekend firearms shows in California, by checking names against the Bureau of Firearms Armed Prohibited Persons (APPS) database. Previously, agents were able to run only 20 individuals against the APPS list at a weekend gun show. Now, using JusticeMobile on iPads, agents are running 80 individuals, an increase of 300 percent.

Images showing how the app works are attached to the electronic version of this release at: https://oag.ca.gov/news

LOS ANGELES --- Attorney General Kamala D. Harris, joined by nearly two dozen local, state and federal partners, today signed a Memorandum of Agreement to participate in a first-of-its-kind system that provides law enforcement agencies with a clearinghouse of data on the neighborhoods they are sworn to protect, as well as extensive links to community-based resources.

Launched by Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca in September 2010, the Community Based Information System (CBIS) is a robust database that primarily serves law enforcement in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The announcement was made at a meeting of law enforcement from Zone 1, which is composed of Los Angeles and Orange counties. This is the fourth of eight zone meetings the Attorney General will convene this year, to encourage collaboration and the sharing of resources among the state’s law enforcement community.

“Our goal is to collect the data we need to predict, and prevent, the next crime,” Attorney General Harris said. “CBIS is an innovative data-mapping project that paints a comprehensive and real-time picture of crime statistics and community characteristics from social services to demographic profiles.”

“The Attorney General signing the CBIS memorandum of agreement represents a significant milestone in bringing this valuable tool to the law enforcement community throughout the State of California,” Sheriff Baca said. “This system has the capability to empower police agencies to effectively identify and assess problem areas, without regard to jurisdictional boundaries, just like crime.”

Attorney General Harris also presented Attorney General’s Awards to brave officers, units and members of the public who were nominated for the honor by local law enforcement agencies.

CBIS takes the standard model of a law enforcement technology system a step further by adding demographics and other information that provides context to the crime occurring in a community. A training tool and research library assists officers in understanding and dealing with criminal and transnational gangs – the state’s most significant public safety threat.

In addition to data on the socioeconomic dynamics of individual communities, CBIS has a searchable database of thousands of community-based resources – thus allowing law enforcement to connect individuals with support services to prevent crime from occurring and intervene as needed.

In March, Sheriff Baca co-chaired an Organized Crime, Gangs & Gun Crime working group that prepared a briefing paper for the Attorney General. That group – made up of dozens of veteran, bi-partisan district attorneys, members of law enforcement, academics and non-profit leaders from across the state – presented their findings and recommendations at a Smart on Crime policy summit. CBIS was included as a “promising practice” of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department; it was recommended that the Attorney General join and contribute to CBIS.

To join CBIS, law enforcement agencies enter into a cost-free agreement with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department by which they enter crime, parole and other data into the system. The California Department of Justice will contribute statewide crime research, crime and gang trend data and other valuable information to the database.

Along with the Department of Justice, law enforcement partners participating in CBIS include: the Los Angeles Police Department, Orange County Sheriff’s Department, US Department of Justice – Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Unified School Police, Tustin Police Department, Anaheim Police Department, South Gate Police Department, University of California, Irvine, Los Angeles County Probation Department, Los Angeles County Housing Authority, Buena Park Police Department, California Highway Patrol – Westminster Office, California Gang Investigators Association, and the Kansas Gang Investigators Association.