Washington Courts: Press Release Detail

Statewide Juvenile Arrest Data Available Through New Dashboard

Extensive youth arrest data from across the state is now available through the new Washington Juvenile Justice Data Dashboard, an online tool developed by the Administrative Office of the Court’s Washington State Center for Court Research (WSCCR). The dashboard opens a window for communities on the arrests of local youth, and their causes, so law enforcement agencies and community members will have a better view of the fairness and effectiveness of policing.

The Law Enforcement Data Analysis (LEDA) Dashboard, developed in partnership with the state Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ), shows the number of arrests per 1,000 youths in the population for the state as a whole, as well as for individual counties and cities with a population over 1,000. The data can be sorted by gender, race, year arrested, and offense category as reported by law enforcement agencies. For example, the user could identify arrest rates for males of color in their city, county, or Washington State as a whole, and see how those rates have changed year-by-year.

The data includes arrests for juveniles ages 12-17 beginning in 2017 through 2020.  The dashboard will be updated annually with 2021 arrest data being added by summer and 2022 data added by the end of this year.

Carl McCurley, manager of the Center for Court Research, hopes the tool will help increase transparency and accountability.

“The dashboard comes at a time when the public needs a clear view of how the justice system operates, and can help law enforcement by empowering communities so they can engage in justice review and improvement,” McCurley said.

This is the first in a series of dashboards planned by the Washington Juvenile Justice Data Dashboard Initiative, a partnership between WSCCR, the Partnership Council on Juvenile Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice. The initiative aims to fill an important gap in our knowledge of the juvenile justice system and help with the larger work of comparing data in order to understand where disparities increase and decrease.

“The Administrative Office of the Courts is pleased to partner with the Department of Children, Youth and Families to provide this valuable new tool for the public and policy makers throughout Washington,” said State Court Administrator Dawn Marie Rubio.

A second dashboard with data on court processing stages — such as referrals, cases, and adjudication — is planned to launch by the end of the year. Future goals in 2024 and 2025 for the Initiative include building linked dashboards to include arrests, court filed diversions, detention admissions, and recidivism.

McCurley explained that in addition to allowing a better understanding of the juvenile justice system by law enforcement and community leaders, another central goal of the dashboard initiative is that other states and law enforcement agencies reproduce this method of tracking arrest.

“If we can do this for arrests of young people, we can just as readily do it for arrests of everybody. Any state or jurisdiction that has this data can do the same thing, and it's pretty straightforward to do it,” McCurley said. “Our hope is that others adopt and spread the method.”

The dashboard is the first law enforcement dashboard by WSCCR that makes innovative use of combined law enforcement data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (by the Federal Bureau of Investigations) and the US Census Bureau.

A 10-minute tutorial video is included on the dashboard and is encouraged for proper interpretation of data and to optimize use of the dashboard. For a more in-depth demo and explanation of the data and goal behind the initiative there is a 54-minute-long webinar available that was held Feb. 9.

The arrest data dashboard can be accessed on the OJJ webpage. Requests for demonstration of the dashboard capability and any questions can be sent to Jenny Young at jenny.young@dcyf.wa.gov.

If users have any feedback they would like to share, they can fill out the short questionnaire.

The Washington State Center for Court Research was established in 2004 by order of the Washington Supreme Court, and serves as the research arm of the Administrative Office of the Courts. Its research is intended to provide information on the work of the courts, help guide judicial policy and improve the functioning of the judicial system while serving all participants in the judicial process.

Positioned within DCYF, OJJ provides statewide resource, education, and coordination of juvenile justice system improvement and reform efforts. OJJ supports innovation and collaboration to reduce the impact of racial and ethnic disparities throughout the juvenile justice system. By providing compliance monitoring, funding, and training, OJJ acts as a resource to juvenile justice system partners.

CONTACT:  Jenny Young, Juvenile Justice Manager at the Department of Children, Youth and Families, jenny.young@dcyf.wa.gov; Dr. Carl McCurley, Manager, Washington State Center for Court Research, (360) 705-5312, Carl.Mccurley@courts.wa.gov.