From Prison Policy Initiative:
At the Prison Policy Initiative, we often hear from journalists, advocates, and others looking for basic information about the criminal legal system. Unfortunately, too often we find ourselves unable to help because rudimentary facts about the system are hard to come by: a lot of things are simply not tracked, and the data that do exist are often limited, inaccessibly formatted, fractured across thousands of jurisdictions, and/or severely outdated.
So, this year, we began collecting some of the data gaps we’ve encountered in the course of our work, which we’ve compiled into a Data Wishlist. We’re publishing the wishlist for two reasons: 1) to highlight just how much basic information is missing in the criminal legal space, and 2) to encourage agencies, researchers, and others to compile and publish these data sets and fill these gaps, chipping away at the information black box around so many aspects of mass incarceration. As you will see, many of the gaps identified in our list would answer exceedingly simple questions about the system, how it functions, and who does (and does not) get punished. This list is by no means a comprehensive survey of criminal legal system data gaps, but we hope it helps people understand just how poor the data environment is and encourages people to chase down this information.
Community supervision
Technical violation data
Data we’re looking for: What percentage of all annual arrests are for supervision violations?
Why it matters: We’ve written on several occasions about how technical violations contribute to unnecessary jailing. These violations contribute to crowding in jails and prisons, forcing people into traumatizing, burdensome interactions with the criminal legal system for acts that are not technically crimes at all. We know that, at the most recent count, at least 128,000 people were incarcerated for technical violations of probation and parole. While the FBI tracks arrests across many types of crimes, arrests for supervision violations are notably absent. “What proportion of arrests each year are for supervision violations” is an exceedingly basic question that we are sadly unable to answer without these data.
Continue reading the wish list here.
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