If your agency is like most, your data use has evolved over time, and the data you’re collecting, using, reporting, and sharing may feel a bit disconnected. When you’re ready to start connecting some dots, you may find you have several spots where you could be using data more efficiently and/or effectively.
Here are a few of the (many!) ways agencies like yours are maximizing their data, along with the questions you can ask to start maximizing yours:
- Measure how policies and practices are impacting public safety. What data are you collecting around reentry? What are your community’s recidivism numbers? What outcomes can you measure from specific practices and programs? In what ways are you seeing your policies and practices produce measurable results? How are you tying those results to community safety outcomes?
- Make better staffing and budgetary decisions. What are your classification trends, and how do your security needs impact your staffing levels in facilities? Where are your security hotspots? Alternatively, what are the risk trends in the community and the officer-to-offender ratio? Which programs are producing the best outcomes? Which are serving the most people? Where are your current budget imbalances, and what data do you need to determine future funding needs?
- Hold yourself and others accountable for outcomes. What data are you reporting to your community, and what is it being used for? How about your partner agencies – what are they sharing, and what do you think they should be sharing? How can you advocate for greater transparency and accountability throughout your community? What additional data points might you need?
- Better serve the people who enter your jail and upon reentry into the community. How are you currently identifying mental, behavioral, and medical health needs? How are you matching those needs to resources? How is your community identifying folks who are good candidates for alternatives to incarceration? How are you making classification, housing, and programming decisions, as well as decisions about supervision level once released? Where are you seeing gaps in your current data?
- Plan for the future. Are you considering a housing expansion or a more robust release to the community agenda? Taking on new programming? Forging new community partnerships? Preparing for new pretrial requirements? What questions will you need to answer, and what data will you need to answer them? What technology might you need to have in place to collect everything you need?
No matter where you are in your current data collection/use journey, we can help you take your operations to the next level. Collect what you need, use it to inform decisions, create easy-to-read and interpret reports, and share seamlessly with others, all with equivant Supervision.
Contact our team of experts today to talk through your unique situation and how we can collaborate on a solution that works for you. Reach out today.
