NEWS RELEASE
DISTRICT ATTORNEY - STATE OF COLORADO
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On Friday, July 22, District Attorney (DA) Michael Dougherty attended an incredibly powerful performance at the Sterling Correctional Facility. DU Prison Arts Initiative worked with the Colorado Department of Corrections and incarcerated individuals to create a documentary play on the many paths into, and people within, the criminal justice system.
The playwrights interviewed DA Dougherty in 2019 as part of their process. Dougherty stated, “The people housed at Sterling were amazing in their roles as the actors, dancers, light crew, producers, and so on. It was a very moving and memorable experience.”
Events such of these are so important and highlight the very real impacts of our criminal justice system. It is our honor and our duty to continue our commitment to serving our community and improving the justice system.
Over the past two years, our office has been working with the Vera Institute of Justice on a data analysis of our 2013 to 2019 data. The final data analysis presentation was released in a virtual community presentation on July 7, 2022. The community presentation was held virtually due to COVID. The presentation information was shared in the paper, posted on social media, and emailed to our newsletter contacts. The recorded presentation can be found on our website.
We are waiting on a written report from Vera as the final piece of our engagement that will be released this summer and will be shared publicly as well. Building off the one-time data review by Vera, the DA's office has partnered with Prosecutor Performance Indicators (PPI) to create a dashboard that will be released in early September.
A public facing data dashboard will allow us to continue to track and share data metrics. This is an exciting next step in our ongoing efforts for data-responsive practices, community engagement, and transparency. We have partnered with PPI and researchers at Loyola University Chicago as well as the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab at the University of Denver. This Data Dashboard project allows us to continue to improve our data collection and analysis and will allow our community to easily access our office’s data.
The two initial public data dashboard will be released this fall along with seven other DA's offices in the metro are who are also working with PPI. We are also excited to partner with PPI and the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab to do an additional data analysis that will focus on data from 2019 to 2022. Further, this analysis with PPI and the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab will go beyond the Vera analysis as it will not simply focus on felonies and will include how an individual’s criminal history factors into decision making and the data.
We are looking forward to hosting a community town hall in October, once the dashboard is live. We will be inviting allies and community partners to co-host. Please watch our social media and sign up for our newsletter on our website for updates.
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