{
  "id": "1995-september-data-tracks-secretive-justice-system-courting-the-poor",
  "slug": "1995-september-data-tracks-secretive-justice-system-courting-the-poor",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1995-september-data-tracks-secretive-justice-system-courting-the-poor.html",
  "year": 1995,
  "month": "September",
  "monthNum": 9,
  "headline": "Data tracks secretive justice system Courting the poor",
  "kicker": "",
  "author_name": "Michael J. Berens",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "The Columbus Dispatch",
  "summary": "The Columbus Dispatch's investigation into municipal court data exposed widespread injustices including illegal jailing of poor people and secret cash deals for drunk drivers, requiring a three-year battle to obtain court records and sophisticated data analysis to decode inconsistent clerk entries that revealed systematic deceptions.",
  "keywords": [
    "justice",
    "data",
    "corruption"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Crime & Justice",
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Data & Databases"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "xBase",
    "Macintosh",
    "9-track tape"
  ],
  "full_text": "There is journalistic justice in using a court database to ferret out the illegal jailing of thousands of poor people, secret cash deals to avoid convictions by drunken drivers, fabricated caseloads, and dozens of other deceptions. Our series, \"Cash-Register Justice.\" last year exposed a secretive justice system where money weighs heavier than guilt. The Columbus Dispatch had its own trial by fire - beginning with a three-year fight to buy municipal court data. Originally, the court wanted $15,000 for a year of data containing one million-plus records and filling a dozen nine-track tapes. Stunned by the initial estimate, we asked for a breakdown of costs. It included $80 an hour pay for some city employees - supposedly to write custom software and so on. These same employees made less than $15 hour in city wages. We argued that the city cannot charge a rate higher than normal pay. We threatened legal action. The price was reduced to $500. Using xBase by Microsoft and our newest toy - a Macintosh Power PC (64 meg RAM) with a gig drive - we crafted relational sorts, such as how many homeless people served jail time before being found guilty of crimes that are not legally punishable by jail. We paid a heavy price in time, too, as we struggled with misplaced and variable length fields, inaccurate entries and case information spread among 12 related databases. Hard lesson: Court data was typed by clerks who adopted personalized codes. The 30 -character charge disposition field became a stream-of-consciousness exercise for some clerks. A defendant sentenced to three years in jail with 30 days jail time credit, a year of probation and $500 fine plus court costs might look like: XRPNC-BOFTS,500 -CC or 1YRPROBPYR/30C/500+C. There was no consistency. Sweet success: Those pesky codes broke the biggest stories. Clerks entered \"NO PW\" for no prosecuting witness - a euphemism for cops who failed to appear in court. Another field code showed when drunken drivers - some testing more than double the legal limit with three prior convictions paid $1,000 to the city to avoid convictions. No kidding. The court never thought outsiders would look at this data- or understand it, if they did. Hard lesson: To em is human - and court clerks are very human. Thousands of cases were not updated accurately on the computer. We pulled paper files to verify results. This was cumbersome but deflected criticism of our findings. The court inflated caseload totals, such as doubling the number of drunken driving cases from 6,000 to 12,000 defendants. The inaccurate numbers hid a bigger secret: caseloads had decreased each of the last three years. One trick used by the court: If a defendant was charged with 32 counts of burglary, the court counted them as 32 cases. Counting is not the only thing courts do badly. Conviction rates are suspect, too. Prosecutors claimed a 70 percent conviction rate involving domestic violence cases. That figure fell to 7 percent when we crunched the data. Prosecutors claimed many victims dropped charges. While true, the data showed that some judges dismissed cases if the victim did not show up at the first hearing - sometimes held 10 hours after the victim was severely beaten. The series ran Sept. 25-28, 1994. Here are some angles that can make for good court projects: Time served: Defendants too poor to make bond often serve jail sentences before being found guilty, then are released at the hearing because they' already served the sentence-sometimes longer than the maximum allowed by law. How many homeless people are jailed and why? We found that homeless people were repeatedly jailed for failing to pay jaywalking tickets - an offense not punishable by jail. In many courts, failure to pay a ticket is treated more harshly than the crime. Are mandatory fines collected? In Ohio, 100 percent of the fines from seat belt violations (among other charges) helped support state programs. Rebellious judges who saw no profit to the local system, routinely dismissed those charges That meant less money to educate children about safety and less training for emergency crews. One lifesaving practice is to provide you statistical analysis to the subjects of the stories before publication. There is nothing more satisfying than watching the stunned faces of prosecutors as you hand them your spreadsheets. From alternative sentencing to campaign financing, we adopted journalism's most basic axiom: Follow the money. In court projects, also follow those who don't have money.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "pre-v2",
    "extracted_at": "",
    "verified": true
  },
  "similar": [
    {
      "slug": "1995-september-uplink-update",
      "score": 0.373
    },
    {
      "slug": "1996-january-from-page-one-calculating-justice",
      "score": 0.247
    },
    {
      "slug": "1994-december-department-of-justice-data",
      "score": 0.184
    },
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      "slug": "1997-january-bits-bytes-and-barks",
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    }
  ],
  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1995-september-data-tracks-secretive-justice-system-courting-the-poor.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1995-september-data-tracks-secretive-justice-system-courting-the-poor.json"
}