Cohort 2024
Chattanoogans in Action for Love, Equality and Benevolence (CALEB)
Driving Policy Change with Analysis of Policing Data
Hamilton County, TN
In Hamilton County, Tennessee, the arrest rate is 94 percent higher than the average metropolitan county. In Chattanooga, the county’s largest city, data reveal highly disproportionate arrest rates among Black and white residents: Black residents make up 32.6 percent of the population but 50 percent of arrests, meaning they are arrested at twice the rate of white residents. These disparities are a result of systemic and social inequalities and cause disproportionately negative outcomes for Black Americans. Although Chattanooga publishes data on arrests made by its police department, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office and eight other municipalities in the county do not. Although arrest data can be accessed through public-record requests, they need to be extensively cleaned and analyzed to be interpretable for community members. In 2023, Chattanoogans in Action for Love, Equality and Benevolence (CALEB), a trusted advocate in Hamilton County, published a jail data report to inform residents on who is being arrested, why arrests are being made, and the effects on community members. It now seeks to expand its data project to advance racial equity and promote reform in the criminal legal system.
With Catalyst Grant funding, CALEB will build on its work to collect and analyze a full year of public arrest and court case data to understand the relationships between pretrial decisions and both public-safety concerns and jail and court outcomes. It will obtain the data via a request to the county court clerk’s office, a process it navigated in 2023 in producing its jail data report. It will share findings with community members and elected leaders, exemplifying a comprehensive framework for publishing arrest and pretrial data in a way that disaggregates information and outcomes to better understand policy impacts. Through this project, CALEB will produce a report presenting policing strategies and court practices that lead to the disproportionate rates of arrest and pretrial detention that Black people in Hamilton County face, and it will use the report to advance racial equity in the county by recommending data-informed policy change.
