Cohort 2024
Kalamazoo Defender
Expanding Data Collection for a Court Observers Program
Kalamazoo, MI
In the United States, racial disparities exist at each stage of the criminal legal system. Particularly in the courts, people of color are more likely to be assessed higher bail amounts, denied bail, detained pretrial , and receive more punitive charges at arraignment. Kalamazoo Defender, a nonprofit public defender office based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, provides zealous legal representation with a holistic lens: racism, trauma, and other systemic barriers often contribute to its clients’ legal situations and cycles of system involvement, and Kalamazoo Defender works to break these cycles by reducing barriers to needed services through its highly skilled legal team, along with a hub of community services called The Village. Over the past year, it has observed local courts, watching for racial disparities in applications of bail, fines, and fees. In addition to nearly four years of existing court data, it hopes to use these data to illuminate racial inequities in prosecutorial and judicial decisions.
With Catalyst Grant funding, Kalamazoo Defender will partner with NowKalamazoo and Kiaer Research to pilot an expanded court observer program to establish a robust local dataset of fines and fees, bail amounts, and defendant demographics and identifiers. Working with NowKalamazoo’s solutions-based journalism approach, it will visualize and report findings to the community through a series of up to six multimedia stories on its website, newsletter, and social media. Findings from this project will also be shared through public events and community debriefing sessions. Through this work, Kalamazoo Defender hopes to advocate for systemic reforms that reduce recidivism and promote racial justice.
