New York State passed sweeping Criminal Justice Reform legislation, dramatically reducing the use of cash bail and pretrial detention, modifying the rules governing the sharing of evidence, and revising practices intended to ensure a defendant’s right to a speedy trial. These enormous system changes, along with their numerous components, were designed to have many intended consequences but were also likely to have unintended consequences. To monitor and respond in near real-time to (as well as allow for continuous long-term monitoring and evaluation of) both, the NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) retained the services of Luminosity’s Data Analytics team to create a mechanism to generate research, performance, and outcome measures.
Between 2019 and 2021, Luminosity worked on a multi-phase project to (1) integrate siloed justice system data; (2) generate research, performance, and outcome measures for data analysis; and (3) use the data analysis results to inform related policy and decision-making. The project team integrated and analyzed data from law enforcement, state court, jail, pretrial services, and specialty programs. The team generated multiple research files containing nearly 150 measures used for data analysis and to feed internal dashboards. The research files continue to be used by MOCJ to provide near real-time information to the community.