MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy says his office will be working with a national reform group to improve data transparency and make his office more accountable for the public.
In a move designed to be more transparent with the public regarding investigations and cases in Memphis and Shelby County, the District Attorney’s office says it’s entering a new chapter and into a new partnership.
“This is something I’ve been talking about since the very beginning of the campaign. The idea of having a public-facing dashboard on the website so that anybody can look up statistics and see how we’re doing when it comes to racial disparities when it comes to repeat offenders,” Mulroy said.
The DA’s office is teaming up with Justice Innovation Lab, a national reform group, to put the spotlight on what’s called data transparency.
“We want to measure the important metrics and measure how we’re doing when it comes to reducing the repeat offender rate. We want to measure how we’re doing when it comes to racial disparity. We’re going to put that out there so the public can hold us accountable,” Mulroy said.
The DA’s office has entered a memorandum of understanding with a Justice Innovation Lab. According to its website, JIL was created by two prosecutors following the prosecution of a police officer in a South Carolina deadly traffic case in 2015. That case exposed problems in the local justice system.
JIL will now be placed within the DA’s office for 12 to 18 months to conduct a review process and other tasks.
“We’re going to put that out there so that the public can hold us accountable and incentivize us to do a better job,” Mulroy said.
As for transparency and the possible release this week of more police video of Tyre Nichols, Mulroy said that will likely be an MPD decision, but he supports the public seeing it.
“I think that’s probably up to the police department and the city. I’m just generally in favor of putting everything that we have out there so the public can see that we’re being transparent,” Mulroy said.
Mulroy told us he hopes to have the online data dashboard up and running for the public to access it later this year.
