Opinion

Opinion: Steps toward criminal justice transparency

The front of the New Haven Superior Courthouse facing Elm Street on April 10, 2019. The front of the New Haven Superior Courthouse facing Elm Street on April 10, 2019. Photo: Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media Photo: Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Opinion: Steps toward criminal justice transparency 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

It’s been nearly six years since the inception of the Black Lives Matter movement, and in 2020, the criminal justice system’s issues with race and poverty are still gripping the nation’s attention. After the tragic deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, many Americans formed fast and furious opinions about policing and prosecution decisions. But little has been done to soothe the public’s frustration on this front.

Most states seem pretty committed to the status quo — but not all. Connecticut and Florida, for instance, are making great strides after having identified the key problem area: transparency.

States generally do what they can to track information like recidivism rates and jail population demographics, but there are major blind spots, especially when it comes to the prosecution in these cases. After all, it’s prosecutors who hold the keys to the criminal justice system, deciding what cases to pursue and what charges to bring — honest or otherwise.

Anyone who enters the system is at the mercy of a prosecutor’s decision-making. And because 97% of all criminal cases are settled with plea bargains, prosecutors almost never have to prove a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt as they would in a trial conviction. Yet, even with that kind of power, most states ask little from them in terms of transparency and oversight. This is troubling, considering that 54% of exonerations are due to official misconduct.

That all started to change last year when Florida introduced transformative legislation requiring substantial data tracking across all criminal justice agencies. Connecticut then followed suit, with a similar bill Gov. Ned Lamont signed into law in July — Senate Bill 880. The bill, which unanimously passed the state’s House and Senate, requires prosecutors to collect and present extensive data on the cases they pursue. This policy wisely includes the input from victim advocates groups, nonprofits like the ACLU of Connecticut, and prosecutors themselves.

Connecticut’s law will finally track data on arrests, diversionary program outcomes, plea agreements, what cases go to trial, information about fines and fees, demographics of people charged and sentenced, restitution status and more. All of this information will be annually presented to and reviewed by a state-sanctioned commission and will be made publicly available online. Lawmakers will be able to use this information to determine if problems like racial bias are systemic issues within their offices and formulate solutions.

While more narrow in scope than Florida’s legislation, this law is a much-needed first step for Connecticut. After all, taxpayers have a right to transparency in every aspect of the criminal justice system they fund.

Without this kind of data, identifying systemic problems and working to solve them is nearly impossible. For instance, let’s say prosecutors regularly recommended people with low-level criminal charges for pre-trial diversion programs to keep them out of jail. But the program is poorly set up, and regularly results in participant’s failure or incarceration. If the only tracking that takes place is at a personalized level, the problem could go on for years before someone connects the dots on the downfalls of the program. And even then, it’d be difficult to prove the problem and come up with a solution.

But if a system exists to track all the participants’ outcomes in a centralized database, outcomes regularly presented to a group of stakeholders, the problem and solution has a far better chance of being recognized and implemented early on. Thankfully, this is exactly what Florida and Connecticut have done. And because almost every state legislature will soon be in session, now is a good time to follow their lead.

Good, comprehensive data is needed across the entire criminal system, because transparency is the only way to fulfill public trust and uphold the accountability our justice system has, for years, desperately required.

Molly Davis is the criminal justice policy analyst at Libertas Institute, a libertarian think tank. She is also a senior contributor to Young Voices Advocates.