Cohort 2023

Starting Over, Inc.

Using a Data Dashboard to Track Prosecutorial Accountability

Riverside County, CA

District attorneys wield enormous power in the criminal legal system and make important decisions about whether to bring charges, what charges to bring, and whether a juvenile will be tried as an adult. District attorney policies and practices in Riverside County, California have contributed to skyrocketing incarceration rates, vast racial disparities in charging, and the criminalization of mental illness and poverty. For example, the county imprisons young people at a rate 2.5 times the state average. And whereas only 7.3 percent of the county’s population is Black, 13.9 percent of adults charged by the district attorney between 2017 and 2020 were Black.

With Catalyst Grant funding, Starting Over, Inc. plans to create a dashboard using Riverside County prosecutorial data to track, analyze, and display real-time statistics that community partners and leaders will share. The dashboard will focus on sentencing demographics, neighborhood origin, percentage of completed criminal records, and numbers of people freed through resentencing. The dashboard will be intended to validate people’s lived experience and facilitate community partner advocacy by bringing transparency, accountability, and culture change to the Riverside district attorney’s office on racial disparities, criminal recordkeeping, and results of prosecutor-initiated resentencing. Starting Over, Inc. hopes the dashboard will advance equity by making racial and ethnic disparities in prosecution and prosecutor-initiated resentencing visible and quantified. The dashboard will be published on Starting Over, Inc.'s website and disseminated by networks of community partners, local colleges and universities, and the Riverside County Public Health Department.