Paper-based crime reports would be converted to digital data sets presented on the California Department of Justice's transparency website, under legislation passed this week.
AB 2524, introduced by California Attorney General Kamala Harris and Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, directs California to collect "incident-based" crime data and statistics in an electronic format from local law enforcement agencies in alignment with the federal National Incident-Based Reporting System.
"It is the intent of the Legislature that following full implementation of incident-based crime reporting, the [California] Department of Justice work to transition to exclusively electronic crime data collection and evaluate the potential for criminal justice statistical data to be updated on the OpenJustice Web portal at a frequency greater than once per year," AB 2524 says.
Harris and CalDOJ launched the department's OpenJustice Web portal in 2015. The website has published data sets such as arrest records, crime and clearance data, and officers killed and assaulted.
“Data and technology have the power to dramatically increase transparency and accountability in our criminal justice system,” said Harris in a statement Tuesday. “I applaud the California Legislature’s passage of this legislation, which will bring criminal justice data reporting into the 21st century. I thank Assemblymember Irwin for standing with me to support the adoption of technology by law enforcement.”
Irwin also weighed in:
"Right now we are sitting on mountains of valuable criminal justice data that local law enforcement worked hard to provide in the public interest. We need to make sure that this information is available to the public and that we are using it effectively. AB 2524 is a common-sense measure that will help bring California into the 21st century.”
The Assembly concurred Senate amendments to the bill by an 80-to-0 floor vote on Wednesday. The governor must sign AB 2524 for it to go into effect.
Cost could be one challenging area. The Senate Appropriations Committee found it could cost "potentially in excess of millions of dollars statewide" to convert local law enforcement agencies to incident-based data reporting in an electronic format.
