Cohort 2025
RISE
Making Data Accessible for Identifying and Addressing Disparities in Sentencing
Douglas County, NE
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution mandates that states must govern impartially and not draw distinctions between individuals based solely on irrelevant differences. Even when they may not rise to equal protection violations, disparities in criminal legal system sentencing can undermine trust in criminal legal processes and perpetuate racial, social, and economic inequities. In Douglas County, Nebraska, a report found that Black people were more likely (PDF) to receive incarceration sentences for simple drug possession than their white counterparts. This type of sentencing disparity can result in racially disparate incarceration rates. In Douglas County, Black people make up only 5 percent of the population but 28 percent of the correctional population (PDF). Comprehensive and accessible data systems are needed to identify and analyze differences in sentencing for different populations and to inform policy changes and other remedies to the disparities observed in Douglas County.
With Catalyst grant funding, RISE aims to develop a data dashboard using Microsoft PowerBI to centralize available sentencing data on an accessible platform, visualize trends in the data, and identify disparities in sentencing in Douglas County. RISE’s data dashboard will feature key metrics including charges, pre- and postconviction sentencing duration, final convictions, types of sentences, and prior justice involvement by demographics. The dashboard will use the most recent arrest and conviction data (made public through the Nebraska Judicial Branch) for people who have been arrested and convicted in Douglas County. Using this data dashboard, RISE plans to review case outcomes to better understand disparities in sentencing. It also plans to host stakeholder engagement meetings that are open to the public and criminal legal system actors about the data dashboard, gather feedback from stakeholders on ways to improve it, and incorporate survey questions for users to track dashboard usage and impacts on policy discussions.
