Check Out A Guide for Evidence-Based Best Practices and Tips for Analyzing Jail Data from the Vera Institute of Justice
The Vera Institute of Justice has recently developed a guide to analyzing jail data to better inform impactful policy creation and social change. The guide provides strategies for obtaining quantitative data on jail populations from local government and other sources, definitions of data points generally collected about jail populations, best-practices for prepping data sets for most effective analysis, and suggestions for different types of analysis that could be performed with that data. Thoughtful analysis of local jail data can guide impactful identification of gaps in systemic or community-based support and outline historical trends. This, can then serve as a powerful basis for fact-based discussions about policy changes concerning how many people enter jails, recidivism, and length of stay.