Rochester nonprofit to release criminal justice data tool

Listen to this article

The Monroe County District Attorney’s Office and Measures for Justice (MFJ), a Rochester-based nonprofit organization, is planning to launch an online data tool, called Commons, that they say will help guide criminal justice policy.

Commons, which is expected to be ready for public access by Aug. 29, gathers county-level data from the criminal justice system across the United States to analyze the information in relation to a series of standardized performance metrics.

According to a news release from MFJ, the organization has been working closely with a community advisory board and has had discussions with the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office to help set data-driven goals in the context of the county’s history of racial, economic and social inequity.

The Commons data platform makes local criminal justice data available to the public and tracks progress on policy goals set by the District Attorney and community leaders.

According to MFJ, Commons is a free and public criminal justice data dashboard that allows users to: Track monthly data on how cases flow through the District Attorney’s Office; detect trends across monthly and yearly measures; separate data by demographics like race, ethnicity, sex, and age; and share findings directly with policymakers and media.

MFJ’s goal is to develop tools that help communities and the institutions that serve them reshape how the system works, according to the news release.