September 26, 2023

The Broward State Attorney’s Office today unveiled our new data dashboard, a public feature on our website that promotes transparency and effective decision-making in the criminal justice system. The dashboard was created in partnership with Florida International University’s (FIU) and Loyola University Chicago’s Prosecutorial Performance Indicators program (PPIs).

Following through on Broward State Attorney Harold F. Pryor’s commitment to make the criminal justice system as transparent and accountable as possible by objectively measuring and analyzing prosecutorial practices, the agency worked with FIU’s experts and a panel of assistant state attorneys, as well as receiving feedback from our community to select the data that is published on our website. The innovative partnership is part of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, which helps fund the Broward research.

The project created data dashboards that are shared with the public online at https://browardsao.com/ppi_dashboard/ The neutral and objective PPI information is used to help analyze and measure prosecutorial decision making and its impact on communities. The goal is to use that research to help prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and the whole community, to analyze what is working and what needs attention or improvement.

“Our top priority – always – is to keep our community safe and to deliver equal justice to all,” Broward State Attorney Harold F. Pryor said. “This helps us increase transparency and accountability by objectively measuring and analyzing what we do, what the criminal justice system does, and how that affects public safety and justice in our community.”

“Digging into the data helps all of us who work in the criminal justice system address serious crime and monitor trends and areas of concern,” Pryor said. “It helps us identify the areas where the justice system needs to improve and we are committed to working with all of our partners in the criminal justice system to improve as expeditiously as possible.”

Click here to read State Attorney Pryor’s op-ed introducing the data dashboard.

Melba Pearson, Director of Prosecution Projects at FIU and co-manager of Prosecutorial Performance Indicators, said: “We at the PPIs are excited to launch the first prosecutorial data dashboard in South Florida. Broward joins our PPI network of prosecutors’ offices of all sizes that value data-driven decision-making and communicating what justice looks like in a transparent manner to the people of their jurisdiction. We look forward to continuing to work with Mr. Pryor and his team to translate the data into positive policy changes for the people of Broward County.”

Dashboard findings include:

• There is no significant difference in the outcomes of criminal cases when looking at a defendant’s race or ethnicity. https://browardsao.com/race-and-prosecution-in-broward-county-ppi-report/
• 75 percent of senior leadership and supervisors in the State Attorney’s Office are people of color and/or women. That diversity is also reflected in our line prosecutors.
• People who live in low-income neighborhoods are more likely to be victims of crime and the crime rate in poorer neighborhoods is higher than in the wealthiest neighborhoods. But charges are dismissed at almost the same rates (less than 1 percent difference in the last quarter of 2022) against people in the lowest and highest income neighborhoods.
• Our policy of prioritizing violent crimes and offenses against the most vulnerable has succeeded in reducing the backlog of felony cases.
• The data has also identified areas where the system can improve, such as ensuring a timely disposition of cases; continuing to work with our partners in the justice system towards decreasing the incarceration differences among counsel types and/or income groups; and working with our law enforcement partners to decrease the violent victimization of the poor.

The Prosecutorial Performance Indicators are 55 measures of performance that challenge and expand traditional measures of success in prosecution. They prioritize public safety, community well-being, justice, equity and fairness for everyone affected by our criminal justice system.

The indicators look at eight objectives for a prosecutor’s office, from increasing timely handling of cases, to reducing racial and ethnic disparities, to expanding community outreach and engagement. They help create a multilayered and holistic assessment that moves beyond individual cases to determine broader impacts and effectiveness. They also allow prosecutors to discern trends, learn about progress and anticipate problems.

Prosecutors and staff members at the Broward State Attorney’s Office worked with FIU’s researchers and our community to examine how we do our jobs. Using neutral and objective data allows us to analyze the fairness and effectiveness of how we handle cases from the time they are presented to us by police agencies, through the evaluation and decision-making process on whether charges should be formally filed, which charges would be appropriate, and how cases are handled through dismissal, referral to diversion programs, prosecution, pleas, trials and sentencing.

The Broward State Attorney’s Office was the seventh prosecutorial office in the U.S. to join the project.