Connecting data to enhance standards across the Criminal Justice System
The Criminal Justice System (CJS) is in fact a series of systems. Each individual agency operates using independent siloed datasets, and most of the time these must be manually pieced together to establish an end-to-end view of system-wide performance. Without timely access to this performance management information, it is extremely difficult for leaders to identify root causes of system issues, track the effectiveness of interventions being made in response, and to visualise and report on progress against strategic and operational priorities.
To address these challenges and ensure expectations for ‘what good looks like’ at both an agency and system-wide level are met, it is vital that agencies connect their data so performance across the end-to-end criminal justice system can be tracked. This will empower the National and Local Criminal Justice Boards to collaboratively adopt a data-driven approach to enhancing standards and most importantly, improving citizens' experiences. The result? Better decision-making, more transparency and greater public trust.
Connected data presents a significant opportunity for system-wide reform – and whilst not a new idea, the case for change has never been more pressing as the scale and myriad of challenges the system is facing across court backlogs, prison overcrowding, and low victim satisfaction has never been greater.
Our Criminal Justice Visualisation Tool (CJVT)
To support the CJS in achieving this vision, we have developed a ‘ready to use’ criminal justice data visualisation tool and underlying data model that automatically links data from the police, CPS, HMCTS and HMPPS. This creates a single version of the truth and enables CJS leaders to track incidents from occurrence all the way through to outcome. We have built this solution in a collaborative and agile manner with over 70+ CJS stakeholders (including Local Criminal Justice Board chairs, senior judiciary and data analysts from across the CJS organisations) to ensure it incorporates the necessary justice insights and subject matter expertise.
As of today, the tool contains ten dashboards dedicated to different views with the ability to filter by different attributes. Users can also easily drill-down from CJ system-wide views to individual groups of cases as required. Priority flags enable the user to visualise data related to those flags only on each of the ten dashboards. Currently, these have been developed for rape, violence against women and girls, domestic abuse and serious sexual offences, however they can be easily adapted to reflect priorities within a local area.
So, what kinds of questions can the Criminal Justice Visualisation Tool enable CJS leaders to answer? Here are a few examples:
- What is the rate of attrition for burglary in my local area?
- What is the average time between incident report and arrest?
- What is the victim profile for rape and serious sexual offences?
- What percentage of trials are cracked or ineffective?
- What is the reoffending rate?
Underpinning the dashboard is an interconnected data model that we have developed. This is supported by automated data transformation pipelines that enable incoming source data to be rapidly processed, standardised and quality assured before being joined with data from across each of the criminal justice agencies.
As with any technology solution, ease of use is critical to ensuring user adoption. Our choice of Microsoft Power BI reflects this need – with no specialist technical skills required and built-in accessibility features. Further, as a cloud-based solution, it is easily capable of scaling from a local to a regional or national level.
What are the benefits?
Using the Criminal Justice Visualisation Tool can result in a host of benefits:
- Truly data-driven decision making - a single version of the truth for cross-system performance which empowers leaders to make informed and data-driven decisions about interventions
- Improved efficiency for CJS governance boards – agencies no longer need to spend time and effort manually piecing together their individual performance data to create a cross-system view
- Improved user experience – easy to use and intuitive visualisations that can easily be amended to reflect the latest priorities
If you are interested in finding out more about our Criminal Justice Visualisation Tool and how it could be used to help enable higher criminal justice standards nationally and locally, please get in touch for a demo!
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Georgie Morgan
Georgie joined techUK as the Justice and Emergency Services (JES) Programme Manager in March 2020, then becoming Head of Programme in January 2022.
Cinzia Miatto
Cinzia joined techUK in August 2023 as the Justice and Emergency Services (JES) Programme Manager.
Ella Gago-Brookes
Ella joined techUK in November 2023 as a Markets Team Assistant, supporting the Justice and Emergency Services, Central Government and Financial Services Programmes.
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