Today, the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) announced the launch of the Justice Navigator, an interactive digital platform that provides communities and law enforcement agencies with streamlined access to public safety data, policy insights and analyses. The platform is CPE’s latest offering to improve policing through data analysis and provide communities and law enforcement agencies the tools needed to monitor and redesign public safety.
Developed in collaboration with a team of engineers from the Google.org Fellowship program, Justice Navigator expands upon CPE’s National Justice Database (NJD) project, which is the nation’s first database tracking national statistics on police behavior. The NJD has provided more than 100 communities with analyses that assess racial disparities in their policing and departmental policies.
Justice Navigator automates the data analysis process and delivery of these assessments, displaying findings in a digestible format. The Justice Navigator platform scales CPE’s capabilities to work with stakeholders to assess their public safety data, and empower communities to determine how they are best kept safe.
CPE will require that all law enforcement agencies who participate in NJD assessments through Justice Navigator publicly share these assessments with communities. Police departments who are participating in the launch of Justice Navigator include the San Diego Police Department and Sacramento Police Department.
“Through Justice Navigator, we take one more step toward being able to build systems of public safety that will create more equitable, healthier, and safer communities," said Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff, Center for Policing Equity Co-founder and CEO and Professor of African American Studies and Psychology at Yale University. "With Google.org's support in creating this tool, CPE can work with stakeholders to make data-driven changes to advance equity.”
“The Center for Policing Equity has a proven track record of using data science to analyze and ultimately reduce racial bias in policing,” said Jen Carter, Global Head of Technology & Volunteering at Google.org. “We are proud to partner with CPE to make policing data more accessible and useful so that it can be used to build a more fair and just system.”
CPE’s Justice Navigator integrates crime, demographic and policing data to address racial disparities in police interactions with community members. Any community member or agency can use Justice Navigator’s resources, which include information on how communities can engage in data-driven reform, advice on how to improve departmental policies, and a worksheet that can help community members and police departments act on priority issues.
Justice Navigator was developed by CPE and Google.org through the Google.org Fellowship program, which enables Google employees to conduct full-time pro bono work with grantees like CPE. Google provided engineers, product managers, UX researchers, designers, and more to develop the Justice Navigator. The partnership between Google.org and CPE first began in 2017, when Google.org lent technical assistance to CPE to develop the NJD. Three years later, Google.org provided a cohort of 14 Google.org Fellows to expand upon the NJD and streamline the data analysis process and delivery of reports, which resulted in the Justice Navigator.
To learn more about Justice Navigator, please click here.
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About Center for Policing Equity: As a research and action organization, Center for Policing Equity (CPE) produces analyses identifying and reducing the causes of racial disparities in law enforcement. Using evidence-based approaches to social justice, we use data to create levers for social, cultural and policy change. Center for Policing Equity also holds a 501(c)3 status.
About Google.org: Google.org, Google's philanthropy, supports nonprofits that address humanitarian issues and apply scalable, data-driven innovation to solving the world's biggest challenges. We accelerate their progress by connecting them with a unique blend of support that includes funding, products, and technical expertise from Google volunteers. We engage with these believers-turned-doers who make a significant impact on the communities they represent, and whose work has the potential to produce meaningful change. We want a world that works for everyone—and we believe technology and innovation can move the needle.