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PROPOSED GRANT AWARD
Department: The Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender
Grantee: Public Defender Office
Grantor: MacArthur Foundation
Request: Authorization to accept grant
Purpose: This award supports the Cook County Public Defender's Data Analytics Enhancement Program, a collaborative partnership between the Public Defender's Office and the Center for Criminal Justice Research, Policy, and Practice at Loyola University Chicago to build and expand the office's data analytics and research and evaluation capacity by funding two new FTEs: a Chief Data Officer and a Data Entry Clerk. This award furthers the office's goals of implementing evidence-based operational decision making, reducing racial and ethnic inequities in the criminal system, and enhancing transparency and empowering communities with accessible defender data. .
Grant Amount: $500,000.00
Grant Period: 1/1/2020 - 12/31/2021
Fiscal Impact: None
Accounts: None
Concurrences:
The Budget Department has received all requisite documents and determined the fiscal impact on Cook County, if any.
Summary: As a field, public defense has been relatively late to the practice of employing data to inform and improve legal representation, policy making and accountability. Too often, the critical work of defending individual clients has taken precedence over strategic efforts to understand the work at organizational and systems levels. As the voice for people most affected by the criminal system, public defenders - and their data - have an essential role to play in telling the larger story of the criminal justice system and shaping reform. Defender data is critical not only to efficient operations and informed policymaking within public defense agencies, but when shared, provides unique insights into the public's understanding of the criminal system. Unfortunately, most public defender offices lack the capacity to collect and present mission-critical data, let alone to draw i...
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