The California Department of Justice's open data portal could be bolstered by new legislation pertaining to data collected from local law enforcement agencies.
AB 2524, introduced Feb. 19 by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, would require CalDOJ to continue preparing an annual data set "that contains the number of crimes reported, number of clearances and clearance rates in California as reported by individual law enforcement agencies," and either post it via a hyperlink on the department's website or post it on the department's OpenJustice data portal.
The department currently is only required to post this data set from a hyperlink.
Last week the California Attorney General's Office unveiled the second version of the open data portal, dubbed "OpenJustice v. 1.1." Additions to the website's dashboard include crime, clearance and arrest rates at the city, county and state level. Available data also include arrest-related deaths, deaths in custody, and law enforcement officers killed or assaulted, as well as demographic data and other societal information.
"The OpenJustice v1.1 rollout includes new features focused on allowing Californians to better understand how the criminal justice system is working in their specific communities," the Attorney General's Office announced.
OpenJustice originally was launched in September 2015 as part of what Attorney General Kamala Harris said is "a whole new way of doing business in government, which is adopting technology in a way that improves transparency."
