Feb 16 -- Executive Order 14074 (Advancing Effective, Accountable Policing and Criminal Justice Practices to Enhance Public Trust and Public Safety) states that building trust in policing and criminal justice requires “transparency through data collection and public reporting.” The Executive Order calls for issuing a report to the President on the current data collection, use, and data transparency practices with respect to law enforcement activities. This includes data related to calls for service, searches, stops, frisks, seizures, arrests, complaints, law enforcement demographics, and civil asset forfeiture. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), on behalf of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and in coordination with the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, is requesting public input to inform this report. Interested persons and organizations are invited to submit comments on or before 5 p.m. ET March 30, 2023.
On May 25, 2022, President Biden signed an Executive Order (E.O.) on Advancing Effective, Accountable Policing and Criminal Justice Practices to Enhance Public Trust and Public Safety (E.O. 14074). This E.O. aimed to enhance public trust and public safety by promoting accountability, transparency, equality, and dignity in policing and the criminal justice system. The E.O. recognized that better data practices are a vital component of advancing these objectives, noting that “Building trust between law enforcement agencies and the communities they are sworn to protect and serve also requires accountability for misconduct and transparency through data collection and public reporting.”
Improving the collection, use, and transparency of criminal justice data enables a more rigorous assessment of the extent to which law enforcement agency procedures and policies yield fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including those in underserved communities. To improve outcomes for communities, we need to identify effective and emerging practices and opportunities to accelerate the adoption and adaptation of those practices across the nation's approximately 18,000 State, Tribal, local, territorial (STLT) law enforcement agencies. To help reach this goal, the E.O. directed the Equitable Data Working Group to work with the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) to create an Interagency Working Group on Criminal Justice Statistics and tasked this group to develop a report about how to collect and publish data on police practices.
In this RFI, we are seeking the following:
1. Information to understand the current data collection, use, and transparency practices across STLT law enforcement activities.
2. Best practice examples and lessons learned from STLT law enforcement agencies and other entities in the criminal justice system related to how they have collected, used, and/or made transparent data disaggregated by demographic information, geographic information, and other variables to inform changes to policies, procedures, and protocols to produce more equitable outcomes.
3. Recommendations on how to build the capacity and ability of STLT law enforcement agencies to collect, use, and make transparent, comprehensive, high-quality, and disaggregated data on law enforcement activities.
Law enforcement agencies can use data to foster collaborations across all levels of government, neighboring jurisdictions, and a diverse community of external organizations. Public-facing tools and dashboards can allow civil society organizations and communities to visualize and use data about police activities and chart their local law enforcement agency's progress toward equitable outcomes. However, for these efforts to increase police accountability and legitimacy and to improve community participation, they must take into account the data analysis capacity and resources of all stakeholders.
The Equitable Data Working Group noted in its recommendations that data disaggregation and transparency need to ensure that individual identities and personally identifiable information (PII) are protected. The stakes of data privacy are exceptionally high in criminal justice, where insufficient privacy and confidentiality can have a chilling effect on victim reporting—including for domestic violence and for hate crimes such as crimes targeted against LGBTQI+ people, religious minorities, and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander populations—which, in turn, reduces the ability of law enforcement to respond to, solve, and prevent crimes.
We invite members of the public to share perspectives on what could help achieve comprehensive and transparent criminal justice data and how the Interagency Working Group on Criminal Justice Statistics should address the requirements in E.O. 14074.
Please consider the following when responding to this RFI:
• Datasets: The Working Group is tasked with issuing a report to the President that assesses current data collection, use, and data transparency practices with respect to law enforcement activities, including but not limited to calls for service, searches, stops, frisks, seizures, arrests, complaints, law enforcement demographics, and civil asset forfeiture. Additional datasets about law enforcement activities to consider include, but are not limited to: use-of-force, officer-involved shootings, de-escalation incidents, incidents (including the federally-reported National Incident-Based Reporting System, NIBRS), hate/bias crimes; solicitations, fees and fines, officer training, community engagement, vehicle pursuits, body-worn camera/dashboard camera metadata, accidents/crashes, patrol locations, and assaults on officers. This RFI does not include surveillance technologies or body-worn camera imagery.
• Law enforcement agencies: This Working Group focuses on policing and criminal justice data from STLT law enforcement agencies,
not Federal law enforcement, which is covered elsewhere in the E.O.
• Equitable data: Equitable data refers to data that allow for rigorous assessment of the extent to which government programs and policies yield consistently fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including those who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality. Equitable data can illuminate opportunities for targeted actions that will result in demonstrably improved outcomes for underserved communities.
• Disaggregated data: One key characteristic of equitable data is that it is disaggregated, or broken down into detailed sub-categories that will differ based on the context and desired policy outcomes. For example, data might be disaggregated by demographics (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, language spoken, national origin), geography (e.g., rural/urban, police district, neighborhood), or other variables (disability, veteran status, housing status), enabling insights on disparities in access to, and outcomes from, government programs, policies, and services.
• Additional context: The Equitable Data Working Group was established by President Biden's first Executive Order, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government (E.O. 13985), to study Federal data collection policies, programs, and infrastructure to identify inadequacies and provide recommendations that lay out a strategy to “expand and refine the data available to the Federal Government to measure equity and capture the diversity of the American people.” The Criminal Justice Statistics Working Group is now part of the NSTC Subcommittee on Equitable Data. It includes representatives of the Domestic Policy Council, the Office of the Counsel to the President, the Department of Justice, the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Gender Policy Council, the Office of Drug Control Policy, the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Education, and the General Services Administration.
OSTP seeks responses to the following [21] questions about how STLT law enforcement agencies collect, use, and make data transparent to inform policies, procedures, and protocols to reduce disparities. . . .
FRN:
https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-03260
OSTP blog:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2023/02/16/advancing-effective-accountable-policing-and-building-public-trust-requires-more-robust-data/