Part 2/10:
The Data Crisis: A Fixable Problem
At the heart of the system's dysfunction lies the data crisis. Despite the enormity of the criminal justice system’s scale and complexity, there is a surprising lack of real-time, actionable data to inform decisions. Directors of corrections, who oversee an $80 billion system, are often left with only static, infrequent reports—usually in formats like Excel spreadsheets filled with numbers, which serve as little more than snapshots rather than comprehensive maps guiding policy and practice.