Nonprofit Measures for Justice has launched an online tool attempting to offer a new beginning to the U.S. criminal justice system. The first tool of its kind has received massive backup from Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s Mark Zuckerberg. Its primary role will be to unravel several mysteries lagging behind the justice system and particularly unearthing data, which is currently inaccessible by the public in all 50 states.
The American justice system is said to be very fragmented and has been highly critiqued by activists. Records have it that around 2 million are locked up in state prisons and local jails and another 188,000 are confined in federal prisons. Apparently, very little is known about these inmates.
The nonprofit will be analyzing data around 32 core questions
With a team of 22 people on board, the Measures for Justice’s new platform will be working in very simple ways. The primary task will be to collect data from different metrics. The numbers will be collected from the courts, prosecutors’ offices, public defenders, probation departments and sheriffs.
Some of the questions that will be covered include the likes of how often people plead guilty without a lawyer and how many people are in jail because they cannot afford to pay bail of less than $500. If found to be too large, the data could also be broken further into refining topics like race, income, and crime level.
A problem must be solved with facts
The period of six years that has been taken to build the online portal will not be in vain. It is necessary to have facts before making conclusions and Measures for Justice continues putting its act together. It may sound like a lot of work but Democratic strategist David Plouffe says, “Better access to criminal justice data is important for informing efforts to make our communities safer and our criminal justice system fairer.”
In the meantime, Facebook’s stock closed at %151.96 witnessing an increase of $1.92 or 1.28%, while that of Alphabet was trading at $991.86 witnessing an increase of $14.25 or 1.46%.