The Monroe County Council voted in support of a $68,000 contract Tuesday night to conduct a study on racial disparities within the county prosecutor's office.
"My long-term vision is to ensure that we have accurate and thorough data collection and analysis," said county prosecutor Erika Oliphant. "We’d like to create a public-facing dashboard to make data available to anyone online, increasing our transparency."
Oliphant's office will be teaming up with Indiana University's Public Policy Institute Center for Health and Justice Research for the study. She said the goals of the study are as follows:
- Pull multiple criminal justice data sources from local police, courts, and probation departments to identify gaps in the prosecutor’s office infrastructure
- Analyze and summarize individual-level justice data to identify where racial disparities exist
- Interview community and justice system stakeholders to capture perceptions of racial and ethnic disparities
- Work toward understanding the mechanisms for contributing to those disparities
- Propose solutions to reduce any issues found
Leading the project will be Eric Grommon, an Applied Criminologist from IUPUI's O'Neill School.
Grommon said his research team is going to examine 18 months of data, primarily from 2019 due to the impact COVID-19 had on data from 2020.
"We tried to plan for the realization that the system looks completely different now as we manage the pandemic," Grommon said.
The study is estimated to last 10 months beginning sometime in April 2021. Oliphant said the county could make a six month extension at no additional cost if more time is needed.
The county is not obligated by any law or mandate to request a study of this nature, but Oliphant said she believes the community can lead by example for the rest of Indiana.
During Tuesday night's meeting, Grommon said it's very uncommon for a community the size of Monroe County to take on such a study.
"Those dashboards that are being produced tend to be in large metropolitan areas," Grommon said. "So in my view, this is the first study that’s going to be advanced that involves a jurisdiction with less than 150,000 residents."
County council members unanimously passed the legislation, citing it was the right thing to do in order to be as transparent as possible.
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"The public has said they want data. They want to know what happens," said county council member Trent Deckard. "They also want to debunk the mystery of who it happens to."
Before the contract becomes final, the Monroe County Commissioners must sign off on the study before the $68,000 is allocated.
Oliphant said her office has already reached out to the commissioners who can now consider the contract with the council's approval.
