Resources

Governments now use the ability to collect and analyze hundreds of data points everyday to automate many of their decisions, but does handing government decisions over to algorithms save time and money? Can algorithms be fairer or less biased than human decision making? Do they make us safer? Automation and artificial intelligence could improve the notorious inefficiencies of government, and it could exacerbate existing errors in the data being used to power it.

MuckRock and the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law (RIIPL) have compiled a collection of algorithms used in communities across the country to automate government decision-making. They have also compiled policies and other guiding documents local governments use to make room for the future use of algorithms.

Through the last year and a half, MuckRock and Lucy Parsons Lab have used FOIA to investigate the use of surveillance equipment by the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Through multiple FOIA requests and lawsuits, the team has demonstrated the CPD’s purchase and use of controversial “Stingray” cellphone surveillance devices among other new surveillance technologies. The work has also shown that Chicago Police have been acting in “bad faith” in fulfilling the FOIA requests. This project page gives preliminary data on the issue and asks for assistance in compiling more information.

As a first step in creating tools that center diverse groups of stakeholders in policing data analytics, Jared Knowles has built a prototype dashboard to interactively explore police arrest data across the United States.

An interactive graphic of data on the many costs of broken windows policing.

This interactive map shows where facial recognition surveillance is happening, where it’s spreading to next, and where there are local and state efforts to rein it in.

The California Police Scorecard utilizes data on a range of policing-related issues to evaluate how each police department interacts with, and the extent to which officers are held accountable to, the communities they serve. The indicators included in this scorecard were selected based on a review of the research literature, input from activists and experts in the field, and a review of existing publicly available datasets on policing in California. The scorecard is designed to help communities, researchers, police leaders and policy-makers take informed action to reduce police use of force and improve accountability and public safety in their jurisdictions.

This is a first-of-its-kind portal that augments the work of the Policing Reform Campaign and provides publicly available data on federal grants awarded to over 150 local law enforcement agencies across the nation. The database provides demographic data for those jurisdictions and, where available, information on police misconduct complaints filed by individuals, consent decrees, and settlement amounts. Communities can use this information to support demands for accountability for law enforcement agencies believed to be engaged in discriminatory or otherwise unlawful conduct.

The Lucy Parsons Labs has launched OpenOversight, an interactive web tool that makes it easier for Chicago residents to file complaints against police officers. Using OpenOversight, members of the public can search for the names and badge numbers of those officers with whom they have negative interactions based on estimated age, race, and gender. Using this information, the OpenOversight web application returns a digital gallery of potential matches and, when possible, includes pictures of officers in uniform to assist in identification.

This is a searchable database gathering past and current incidents of police violence against women of color, including both trans and non-trans women of color.