Pro-DATA

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 after a live demon­stra­tion, which can be sched­uled here.

What Is Pro-DATA?

Pro-DATA includes:

• a cus­tom-built appli­ca­tion that can help juris­dic­tions gath­er and orga­nize their youth jus­tice data for more than 100 mea­sures, such as court refer­rals, for­mal pros­e­cu­tions and new pro­ba­tion cas­es. The tool can also be used to track local pri­or­i­ties and break down data by offense type, risk lev­el and more.
• a dash­board that allows users to ana­lyze and visu­al­ize a sin­gle site’s data or explore how their site’s data com­pare to oth­ers. In mul­ti­site views, only a user’s juris­dic­tion will be labeled, with the oth­er sites anonymized. The dash­board also helps users view infor­ma­tion con­tex­tu­al­ly by iden­ti­fy­ing trends over time and dis­ag­gre­gat­ing data by race.

Work­ing in part­ner­ship with prac­ti­tion­ers nation­wide, Casey cre­at­ed Pro-DATA to address a per­va­sive prob­lem: Juve­nile jus­tice data are often frac­tured and dif­fi­cult to access. Nation­al data gen­er­al­ly take two to three years to com­pile. With Pro-DATA, juris­dic­tions can eas­i­ly orga­nize, visu­al­ize and ana­lyze their data in close to real time.

What Can Juris­dic­tions Do With Pro-DATA?

The Pro-DATA appli­ca­tion lets juris­dic­tions do the fol­low­ing and more: 

• Gath­er and visu­al­ize their youth jus­tice data on more than 100 measures.
• Add unlim­it­ed addi­tion­al mea­sures to address local priorities.
• Iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties for improve­ment and track what inter­ven­tions work — and don’t work and for which groups of youth.
• 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 the fact that racial groups fre­quent­ly have dif­fer­ent out­comes, often with stronger gains for white youth than youth of color.
• Visu­al­ize trends and mon­i­tor whether trend lines are mov­ing in the right direc­tion, and, if not, what actions may make a difference.
• Com­pare their own data to oth­er juris­dic­tions’ data (with oth­er juris­dic­tions anonymized).

The juve­nile pro­ba­tion depart­ment in Har­ris Coun­ty, Texas — home to Hous­ton — was one of 20 juris­dic­tions to pilot the tool.

“When I saw what Pro-DATA could do, I knew a wide range of indi­vid­u­als should have access to it, and not just peo­ple inside the pro­ba­tion depart­ment,” said Hen­ry Gon­za­les, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Har­ris Coun­ty Juve­nile Pro­ba­tion Depart­ment. ​“Data trans­paren­cy is a core prin­ci­ple of our agency, so this was a no-brainer.”

Exam­ples From the Dashboard

Exam­ple 1: 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 2023.

Exam­ple 2: 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 depicts the change in the num­ber of delin­quen­cy refer­rals to juve­nile court from 2019 to 2023. The visu­al includes all juris­dic­tions who have entered delin­quen­cy refer­ral data for 2019 and 2023. Note, the data are self-report­ed by state and local agen­cies, apart from pop­u­la­tion data, which are U.S. Cen­sus Bureau data pro­vid­ed by the fed­er­al Office of Juve­nile Jus­tice and Delin­quen­cy Prevention.

Sign Up for a Live Demon­stra­tion to Get an Account

Sched­ule a live demo and receive a log-in to explore the dash­board. If Pro-DATA could help your agency, Casey will issue an account to your juris­dic­tion. With­in 30 min­utes of your juris­dic­tion upload­ing its data, it will be avail­able in the dashboard.

Who Can Access the Tool?

While the Foun­da­tion encour­ages pub­lic sys­tems to use Pro-DATA to build com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ships through data trans­paren­cy, sys­tem lead­ers will set access for each juris­dic­tion. By extend­ing invi­ta­tions broad­ly, agency lead­ers can engage the com­mu­ni­ty part­ners who are best posi­tioned to cre­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ties and sup­port net­works that young peo­ple need for healthy development.

How to Log On to Pro-DATA

If you already are a reg­is­tered user or have been invit­ed to reg­is­ter by a par­tic­i­pat­ing juris­dic­tion, vis­it the Pro-DATA web­site.