About Us

Chicago Justice Project is the fuel for justice throughout Chicago’s many communities. We empower communities to challenge justice system policies and practices with evidence-based analysis. Our work creating targeted advocacy campaigns and innovative data systems stimulates change based on real evidence.

Our Seven Point Plan for Transparency

This plan seeks to uphold the mission and vision that the Chicago Justice Project was founded upon more than ten years ago. These founding principles separate the Chicago Justice Project from all other transparency efforts in the United States of America. We exclusively fight for systemic data that can be used to uncover patterns in the operations of our local criminal justice systems.

As we demand transparency from our justice agencies, so should you demand it of us. This seven-point plan outlines how we will ensure our own transparency to the public.

1. Open – We will pursue and acquire only multi-year data sets through advocacy and litigation. Additionally, we well enforce agreements on the release that include mandates for regular updates to the newly-opened data.
2. Integrity – In order to ensure that the data is accessible, we will clean and maintain the integrity of the database. We will use consistent cleaning protocols in order to maintain the highest levels of data integrity over time.
3. Mine – Subject matter experts will mine the data to identify all usable information and make it available. Due to possible input errors over time, not all data is necessarily usable and must be sifted through.
4. Connect – We will connect the data released to other data sets from across our justice system. By sharing data across agencies, we can increase the power and depth of our understanding of the local justice system.
5. Learn of Needs – Public feedback is critical. As such, we pledge to learn from stakeholders, local communities, subject matter experts and academic researchers about what they want to know about the operations of each agency and the system as a whole.
6. Build – In order to ensure open and public access, we will build an online architecture that serves the needs of stakeholders and communities.
7. Release – Every data set we release will be available for public download.