Justice
The Key Ingredient in Stop-and-Frisk Reform: Open Data
You can't fix what you don't understand.
Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts sued the Boston Police Department, demanding that they turn over recent years' data on police stops to address concerns that people of color are being overpoliced in the city.
"It's true that we already know enough to implement serious reform," emails Matthew R. Segal, legal director at the Massachusetts ACLU. "But it's equally true that police departments and public officials can be resistant to reform, and getting more current data could help to overcome that resistance."