Finding

Criminal justice agency responses to the coronavirus pandemic were impeded by a lack of relevant, trustworthy, and comparable data. Responses to future pandemics should be informed by both reliable data and rigorous research.

Answering the most critical questions about the coronavirus pandemic requires relevant, reliable, and comparable data, as well as sound research. Unfortunately, a critical lack of data has hampered research and analysis, leaving many of these questions unanswered or unclear. Collection and reporting of COVID-19-related data has been inconsistent across the criminal justice system. Some agencies regularly report on COVID-19 infection, morbidity, and mortality rates among their staffs and people in custody, but many do not. Few agencies include in their data basic demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, and race or ethnicity, that could reveal unjust disparities. Data that is collected is not standardized to facilitate efficient comparison and analysis. Data collection is not merely an academic exercise. Inadequate information hampered the speed and efficacy of the system’s response, almost certainly resulting in greater levels of sickness and death. Poor data impedes effective and decisive action within agencies and hampers essential cross-agency collaboration. Law enforcement, courts, and correctional agencies often lack comparable information, including unique identifiers to track individuals flowing through and across systems. In addition, the lack of relevant, reliable, and comparable data has hindered communication with the public, undermining confidence, creating confusion and uncertainty, and allowing for the spread of misinformation. Moving forward, agencies should use consistent, standardized, and transparent approaches to data collection and reporting during public health crises like the coronavirus pandemic. Testing, infection, hospitalization, and death rates should all be tracked, along with basic demographic information that will identify disparities, especially with regard to racial and ethnic minorities and other potentially disadvantaged groups. As the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously stated in 1913, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Publicly reporting key health data will encourage better performance among criminal justice officials and lawmakers. For instance, such data can be used to construct public indices comparing the performance of jurisdictions. Evidence suggests that these indices are influential and can favorably impact governmental decision making. Effective analysis of the pandemic depends not only on robust data, but also on diligent documentation of changes to policy and practice, such as changes to arrest policies made by law enforcement agencies; delaying, cancelling, or videoconferencing court appearances; and limiting admissions to or expediting releases from correctional institutions. Despite these challenges, state and local responses to the coronavirus pandemic have provided valuable opportunities for learning. A national COVID-19 research agenda for criminal justice agencies is needed not only for leaders to understand and continue to combat the current pandemic, but also to enable them to prepare for possible emergencies in the future. In addition, research on the coronavirus pandemic could prove critical to understanding and improving criminal justice operations and approaches in normal times. For example, research examining early release policies may yield results that prompt reconsideration of incarceration policies more generally. As noted previously, a report produced for the Commission found that people released from jail during the pandemic had lower rebooking rates than those who were released prior to the pandemic, despite facing more serious charges.