Hoping Garden State can germinate a bounty of new criminal justice data

This new Law360 article, headlined "NJ Criminal Justice Data Law Could Spur Reforms Elsewhere," reports on a great new data development in the great state of New Jersey.  Here are excerpts from the piece:

A new law pulling back the curtain on New Jersey's criminal justice system by requiring its attorney general to compile and analyze a wide range of information could serve as a model for the rest of the nation and fuel future reform efforts in the Garden State, experts say.

The measure, which was signed into law on Nov. 9 by Gov. Phil Murphy, calls on Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal to set up a program to "collect, record and analyze data" on defendants 18 or older, including their race, ethnicity, gender and age, and what happens to their cases, including systematic plea negotiation information that typically goes unrecorded.

Following other initiatives in the state in recent years including sweeping bail reforms, the data collection and analysis will provide a closer look at potential problems in the system and better equip lawmakers to tackle those issues.  For example, the data could provide insight on racial disparities in prosecutions and mass incarceration, experts say.

"Until we have a full picture of what's happening, there's no way to offer a solution that will be comprehensive," said Jesse Kelley, government affairs manager for the criminal justice and civil liberties policy team at the R Street Institute, a libertarian think tank....

Mikaela Rabinowitz, director of national engagement and field operations at criminal justice research organization Measures for Justice, said the law could be a national model in terms of the breadth of the data collection and the recognition of "the need to centralize these disparate sources" of information.

In a country where criminal justice data is spread across various agencies and "you can't actually assess what is going on systemwide," the law is an acknowledgment that "in order to actually understand how the criminal process is working, we need to take data from these disparate agencies and disparate sources and put it all in one place," Rabinowitz said....

The data will include "warrants, arrests, charges, filing of criminal complaints, and indictments," "dismissed or downgraded charges," and "plea agreement negotiations, including data concerning plea offers extended and accepted or rejected by the defendant, plea agreements entered or rejected by the court, and whether the plea agreements involved probation or incarceration," according to the bill.

For cases involving victims, the data will include "the race, ethnicity, gender and age" of the defendant and the victims, the bill says.  "This is potentially groundbreaking legislation, and it calls for data collection and reporting that currently exists nowhere in the United States," Duke University law professor Brandon Garrett told Law360.

Garrett, who leads the university's Wilson Center for Science and Justice, pointed out that states rarely "collect any data on victims, and yet in study after study, we have found that in serious cases, the race of the victim in particular matters a great deal to sentencing."

Data on plea talks also is "typically not recorded by anyone, including prosecutors," Garrett said.  Collecting "such systematic data would be enormously impactful" and "open the black box on charging in criminal cases," he said.  "One hope could be that not only will the public better understand outcomes in the system, but judges, public defenders and prosecutors will themselves better understand their work," he said.