Evaluating the Effectiveness and Equity of Court Interventions to Reduce Involvement with the Criminal Justice System

Fellows: Nomi Carlebach, Wesley Hill, Meltem Ozcan
Data Science Mentor(s): Liliana Millán
Project Manager: Erika Salomon
Project Partner: Kansas City, Missouri Municipal Courts

The Kansas City Missouri Court processes more than 200,000 cases each year for traffic violations, general ordinance violations, building code, nuisance violations, animal health, and public safety violations and often deal with individuals with substance abuse, mental illness, homelessness, or domestic violence issues. Many of these individuals have frequent and recurring involvement with their system and probation programs and a key challenge the Courts is dealing with is lowering the risk that these individuals will receive new charges or experience new bookings after the successful completion of their probation programs. Our partnership involves using data from court cases and probation to help develop a data-driven infrastructure to design experiments that help  Kansas City Courts evaluate the effectiveness and equity of various intervention programs.