Documenting Progress: Performance Measurement and the JRI State Data Tracker

• In Event: Reforming Sentencing and Corrections Policy: The Experience of Justice Reinvestment States

Abstract

Over the past several years, state stakeholders and national JRI partners have intensified their focus on effective performance measurement. Measuring and reporting the outcomes reforms produce allows states to review their progress and helps them determine what additional policy or administrative changes are needed. Reporting outcomes can also highlight success stories and lessons learned for other states. The JRI approach to performance measurement has evolved over time along with more sophisticated tracking and reporting mechanisms. Progress is assessed through three primary approaches: tracking system-level trends on key outcomes, monitoring policy-specific data trends, and conducting more targeted assessments of the effects of specific state policies. This paper will summarize the approach and present findings of both system-level trends and policy-specific measures. It will also highlight findings and lessons learned from a convening in 2016 that brought together stakeholders and data analysts from 26 JRI states around the topic of improving performance measurement. Finally, it will include a demonstration of the JRI State Data Tracker, an online resource launched in 2016 to provide information on system-level indicators such as prison, probation, and parole populations and overall state savings and reinvestment.

Authors

• Chelsea Thomson, Urban Institute

• Samantha Harvell, Urban Institute

• Ryan King, Urban Institute