San Francisco DA Launches New Portal For Criminal Justice Data
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- The office of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin revealed the new portals on its website allowing residents to access detailed criminal justice information.
The recently built "SFDA Prosecutions of SFPD Incidents & Arrests" dashboard tracks the number and types of incidents reported to the San Francisco Police Department that result in arrest as well as those that are prosecuted.
The new website allows residents to "observe the relationship between incidents, arrests, and prosecutions, and see the roles of the SFPD and the district attorney's office within the larger criminal justice system and legal process," according to a release announcing the new website.
"My office is committed to transparency and data-driven policies and these new dashboards promote increased public access to criminal justice data," said Boudin.
On the website, users can now follow SFPD arrests and charges through to prosecutions pursued by the district attorney's office as well as those cases that are dropped. The website also provided ongoing data on the kinds of crimes occurring in the city and how the SFDA's office has been handling them.
"For example, say a member of the public is interested in learning how many robbery cases law enforcement presented to the SFDA in 2021 and how the SFDA responded to those cases," the SFDA statement read. "By selecting the appropriate filters, a public user of this dashboard could learn that in 2021 law enforcement presented the SFDA with 280 cases in which robbery was the most serious charge. Of those, the SFDA filed new charges in 71.79% and took action on 84.64% of them."
As Boudin faces a possible recall, the new portal demonstrates how the DA is keeping his campaign promise to make his office transparent. The office became the first in the state to aggregate its prosecution data in 2019 and the portal has only expanded from there.
The San Francisco DA's updated data dashboard is a leap forward in the transparency race that every district attorney in the nation should be running in to improve the criminal justice system," said Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig.
