Show Me the Data!

As the Biden administration begins to implement its criminal justice reform goals, experts say that access to timely and accurate data will be essential for the success or failure of the administration’s agenda. Key to that effort is reforming the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the nation’s main source o f data on the criminal legal system.

“Your policies have to rest on something, and the outcome of your policies, the goals that you want to achieve have to be measurable,” said Peter Wood, chairperson of the Crime & Justice Research Alliance. “And if you have no data, how are you going to know whether what you’re doing is having an impact?”