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January 31, 2019 – Criminal Justice

The Vera Institute of Justice Launches New Visual Data Tool to Provide Clarity on Arrest Trends

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With the support of the Charles Koch Foundation, the Vera Institute of Justice launched a new data visualization tool, Arrest Trends, which provides easy access to valuable data on arrest trends across the country. The release of the tool coincides with the new report, Every Three Seconds: Unlocking Police Data on Arrests, which concludes that in the United States, an arrest occurs every three seconds, amounting to 10 million arrests each year.

Overcriminalization and mass arrests have become a major problem in this country and, in order to fully understand the problem we need access to data that will help answer tough questions and give further insight into current policing practices. Prior to the launch of Vera’s new tool, this data was difficult to locate and interpret. As a result, we know very little about who is being arrested, where they are being arrested, and if that arrest was necessary in the first place. Vera is hoping to bridge this knowledge gap with the launch of Arrest Trends.

“We hope that Arrest Trends will generate dialogue about the role of policing, support police agencies on their path to reform, and be used to highlight the extent to which local decisions about arrests create disparity and may act as a primary driver of mass incarceration,” said Rebecca Neusteter, Director of Vera’s Policing Program.

Read more about the project here.