Pro-DATA is a free resource created by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to support data-driven decision-making and data transparency in youth justice at the local and state levels. This online tool is open to all jurisdictions by request.
Pro-DATA is an application for jurisdictions to gather and visualize their youth justice data on more than 100 measures, with the option to add unlimited additional measures to address local priorities. The application’s chart-making capability helps users identify opportunities for improvement and track what interventions work — and don’t work, and for which groups of youth. The dashboard lets users see patterns for all youth and then dive deeper into patterns by race and ethnicity, among other characteristics. Without the deeper dive, stakeholders might miss that racial groups frequently have different outcomes, often with stronger gains for white youth than youth of color.
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With the tool, users can easily visualize trends and monitor whether trend lines are moving in the right direction, and, if not, what actions may make a difference. Pro-DATA also allows jurisdictions to compare their own data to others. Note, the data is self-reported by state and local agencies, apart from population data, which is U.S. Census Bureau data provided by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
The data dashboard allows users to analyze their own jurisdiction’s data in multiple ways, including trends over time, trends by race, distributions and racial disparities across key decision points. See figure 1 for an example. It indicates disparities between Black youth and white youth at key decision points (referrals, formal filings, probation, technical violations of probation and commitments to state facilities) for a single jurisdiction in 2022.
The dashboard also offers several ways for users to see their own jurisdiction’s data in relation to others using the tool, with other jurisdictions anonymized and labeled as Site A, Site B, etc. Figure 2 shows the change in the number of referrals to juvenile court from 2019 to 2022. The visual includes all jurisdictions who have entered referral data for 2019 and 2022, along with a hypothetical jurisdiction labelled “User’s Site” for illustration.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation encourages jurisdictions to share access to Pro-DATA with a broad array of stakeholders to advance transparency and partnership. The aspiration is that “DATA” in Pro-DATA signifies Data Accessible to All — meaning the range of local stakeholders involved in young peoples’ long-term success, including probation officers and other justice system leaders and staff, communities most affected by the justice system, young people with experience navigating the juvenile justice system and their family members; and other advocates for the long-term success of young people exposed to the legal system.
Interested youth justice agencies should follow the link below to create an account and begin using the dashboard. To submit an application, the jurisdiction will need to identify at least one system leader to be an initial account holders. After an account has been established, the jurisdiction could add an unlimited number of additional users. View a list of all jurisdictions presently using Pro-DATA.
Apply for Your Jurisdiction to Use Pro-DATA
If you already are a registered user or have been invited to register by a participating jurisdiction, visit the Pro-DATA website.