Criminal Justice Experts Say Lawmakers Will Need to Be Careful With New Crime Data
April 23rd, 2018 by Jake Stofan
Florida will begin consolidating crime data from multiple agencies including prisons, law enforcement and courts all in one easy to access data base.
The goal is to get a better understanding of criminal trends in the state to help inform policy decisions, but some criminal justice experts say interpreting those numbers will be a challenge in itself.
Crime data in Florida is scattered among many agencies, making it hard to see the big picture.
“So it [the data] might as well be at times, nowhere,” said Representative Chris Sprowls.
The new system will require local law enforcement, clerk of the courts, state attorneys, public defenders, local jails and the Department of Corrections to submit statistics to the Florida Department of law enforcement.
Lawmakers call it the gold standard in crime reporting.
Florida has the third highest prison population in the country, costing $2.3 billion a year.
The hope is the new data will help reduce the amount of prisoners by helping lawmakers make better decisions.
Barney Bishop with the Florida Smart Justice Alliance says while he believes the data will be useful, lawmakers shouldn’t take the first year’s reports at face value.
“The reality of it is, is that academics are not going to be able to look at that data until you have two or three years so they can look at what trends are,” said Bishop. “But the most important issue is going to be is the criminal justice system really blind? I mean, is there discrimination that’s going on?”
State Attorney of Florida’s 2nd Judicial Circuit, Jack Campbell agrees, adding lawmakers also need to be cautious in the way the interpret the data.
“We want to make sure that we’re counting it right, that we’re defining things right so that when we make conclusions, they’re sound and they’re not just perversions,” said Campbell.
The new law take effect on July first of this year.
Agencies that fail to comply with the new reporting requirements will be ineligible for state funding for 5 years.
The law takes effect on July 1st of this year. The data will be made available to the public on FDLE’s website.
Posted in State News | 
No Comments »