Transparency is the core of public trust, and that trust must be earned. For the past year, we led a bipartisan group of eight district attorneys to dramatically increase transparency about how criminal justice works in our state and to shed light on our part in it.

The result: new public websites giving unprecedented insight into the decisions and practices in our offices based on data.

RELATED: Eight Colorado DAs unveil detailed data about prosecutions, racial disparities

The information is now fully accessible and consumable online and is visible to our offices, colleagues, communities, and policymakers. The data dashboards remain a work in progress — no dataset is perfect. We bring this data forward not just for the benefit of our offices but to commit to engaging in important conversations that are not derailed by anecdotal information from any side.

Across the country, only 25% of local and state prosecutors publicly share data. Far fewer have shared the type and volume of information we have now released, which includes case outcomes, race and ethnicity data, and other decision points that impact community safety.

Our dashboards, which wrung data from an aging case management system, were not possible without broader technical support. We are proud to partner with the Microsoft Justice Initiative, which funded the project via nationally renowned research partners at the University of Denver’s Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab, the Prosecutorial Performance Indicators, as well as our fellow district attorneys around the state.

Moving forward, we are committed to supporting every DA in Colorado having the opportunity to join us in sharing data with their communities.

Crime rates and criminal justice reform remain at the forefront of our local and national conversation. We often do not agree on the same solution to the problems we face, but we share a core belief that accurate and reliable data must drive our decision-making.

We are tired of anecdotes from the Denver metro, other states, or national headlines driving dialogue and policy. Now, we can all see what local issues and challenges actually exist, and we are already making moves to confront them.

In the 1st Judicial District Attorney’s Office, which includes Jefferson and Gilpin counties, data collection revealed that 22% of Latinos in the jail are misidentified, discounting the disproportionate impact on the second largest racial and ethnic group accounting for 16% of our community.

We swiftly responded by working with stakeholders to create a process for self-identification in the jail, as part of our overall efforts to utilize our jail for folks who cannot be safely supervised in the community and prevent poverty as a barrier to safe release. To see this type of systemic oppression in the data is to enable opportunities for us to come together as a community and find solutions.

In the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, we are better able to assess our response to the epidemic of auto theft that has swept across the state of Colorado. Building these tools has helped us sharpen our approach to ensure repeat offenders are not immediately released into the community to commit new crimes.

In 2022, we have increased the percentage of repeat offenders going to prison, decreased the percentage going back into the community on probation, and nearly doubled the average jail sentence a car thief will serve.  We can now better evaluate how our tougher position on bonds and sentences is leading to safer communities.

By giving the public the chance to see what we see, we are asking folks to understand what is happening in the counties we serve. But these dashboards aren’t the answer to a question. They are a catalyst for meaningful conversations on the most challenging issues we face, including disparities, funding, and recidivism.

We look forward to putting this data to work. While this is a monumental step forward, data without action is meaningless, and we are just getting started.

John Kellner, a Republican, is the district attorney for the 18th Judicial District. Alexis King, a Democrat, is the district attorney for the 1st Judicial District.

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