A Few Criminal Justice Big Data Rules

Abstract

As with most new things, the big data revolution in criminal justice has historic antecedents — indeed, a 1965 Presidential Commission called for some of the same data analysis that police departments and courts are today developing and implementing. But there is no doubt we are on the precipice of a criminal justice data revolution, and it is a good time to take stock and to begin developing guidelines so that, as much as possible, criminal justice systems might reap the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of this newly data-centric world. In that spirit, I propose ten high-level rules to guide criminal justice big data implementations.

Keywords: big data, analytics, fourth amendment, sentencing, policing, privacy, adjudication

JEL Classification: K14, K41, K42