Civilytics contributes to the Reveal national radio show
Friends and Colleagues,
Welcome to the official launch of the Civic Pulse newsletter. 2020 is a big year for Civilytics and we’ll be sharing a lot of our work publicly - we’ll be using this newsletter to keep you up to date. In this issue you’ll learn about:
Civilytics’ work on prison gerrymandering featured on the national radio show and podcast, Reveal.
A preview of Civilytics new report: Policing the American University. The first ever comprehensive national analysis of campus police departments.
An update on Education Data Done Right and plans for volume 2 later this year.
Civilytics is dedicated to restoring our democracy by elevating the voices of others with data analysis. We do this through consulting, training and education, and public research. You can learn more about all of these at: www.civilytics.com
On to this month’s topics!
Prison Gerrymandering
Prison gerrymandering is the practice of counting people, for the purposes of political representation, as residing where they are incarcerated instead of where they are from. I learned about prison gerrymandering by contributing data analysis to this excellent story, out now on the national radio show and podcast Reveal, by the Center for Investigative Journalism.
You should go listen to the story now: https://revealnews.org/episodes/dont-count-on-the-census/
Civilytics did the background data analysis for the story and supported journalist Natasha Haverty in her reporting on the extent and impact of prison gerrymandering in Wisconsin. Natasha’s story does an excellent job centering the voices of the people impacted by prison gerrymandering. The data work takes a backseat here as it should. The voices of those impacted by residential segregation, poverty, and mass incarceration tell the greater truth. While it is important to point out that statistically, prison gerrymandering gives a small edge to Republicans in Wisconsin, even more important is the fact that it greatly reduces the political power of Black communities.
This story is the first product of Civilytics’ collaboration with Natasha Haverty - more data heavy stories looking at the impacts in Wisconsin will follow in the lead up to Census Day in April. This also represents Civilytics’ first step toward publishing completely independent public research on police and criminal justice reform topics, with a lens of racial justice. Much more on these fronts is scheduled for 2020. Stay tuned.
Learn more about prison gerrymandering, our collaboration with Natasha Haverty, and future planned work on our website: https://www.civilytics.com/project/prison-gerrymander/
Policing the American University
Later this month we will publish our first independent research report: Policing the American University. This in-depth report gives a national overview of campus police departments -- law enforcement agencies with powers of arrest, seizure, and use of force that are accountable to campus authorities. In 2016, (the most recent national data), just under 7.5 million students attended a college with a campus police department (over 60% of the total student population). Despite their prevalence, relatively little has been reported about how campus police departments behave or what role they serve at college and in the broader community.
Until now.Civilytics’ brand new report looks at nationally available administrative data which covers the majority of these agencies and investigates the growth, composition, and arrest behavior of campus police and contrasts them to what we know about municipal police departments.
The report will be released in late February 2020. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay up to date and learn more heading up to the release:
Education Data Done Right
Finally, the last time many of you heard from us was when we announced the publication of Education Data Done Right in October. Since release, we have heard from dozens of public sector data analysts across the country about how they have found the book helpful in their work. We can’t thank you enough for reading our work, and hearing from readers how it has helped always puts big smiles on our face during our planning calls.
Speaking of planning calls… we have plans to release a second volume this fall featuring a wider set of contributors! We’ll be presenting case studies of analytics projects we think highlight best practices for using education data well, told by the people who made those projects happen. This project based approach will allow us to cover a wider range of topics and, we hope, highlight just how much good work is being done in the field and going unnoticed.
Wendy and Jared will be making the rounds giving talks about the book and sharing it at conferences and events. The next chance to catch them is at CCSSO’s ASR meeting in New Orleans in February.
Pick up your copy of EDDR at www.eddatadoneright.com - and remember - the digital version is always available for free!
Upcoming Events
With the spring-like weather here in New England, it is hard not to look ahead to upcoming events. In addition to releasing Policing the American University, Civilytics will be releasing some updated accountability tools related to municipal police departments and county sheriff's offices. We are looking forward to partnering with the Community Resource Hub in that effort. More on that very soon.
With gratitude,
Jared
Jared Knowles, Ph.D.
President, Civilytics Consulting LLC