As the CEO of the Center for Policing Equity (CPE), Yale Professor and PRISE faculty affiliate Phillip Atiba Goff works with police departments to reimagine public safety. The CPE is a non-profit organization that works to eliminate racial bias outcomes among police officers by, first and foremost, empirically measuring them. Indeed, CPE uses innovative data science techniques to provide a more comprehensive understanding of racial discrepancies in policing. Data collected by research scientists at the CPE enabled the organization to create the National Justice Database (NJD)—the first database in the United States that standardizes and records national statistics on the behavior of police officers and policing outcomes.
Data Science for Equitable Policing
Additionally, the CPE partners with police departments to help improve their relationships with communities. Their extensive data collection procedures inform these partnerships. Specifically, the CPE designed an analytical tool—the “Justice Navigator”—to analyze the data contained in the NJD. This tool can be used, for example, to identify conditions that intensify biased policing, which proves invaluable in formulating strategies to eliminate this bias. In general, the CPE encourages police departments to implement policy changes that will result in more racially equitable outcome of policing.
It is important to note that, while the CPE does work to reform police departments, a central objective of the CPE is to decrease the “footprint” of law enforcement on communities. This preemptive approach emphasizes preventing violence and improving community well-being by providing resources that encourage prosperity, thus eliminating the need for a heavy police presence in the first place. There is a significant focus on establishing replacements for police officers that are better equipped to handle certain crises, such as mental health emergencies.
On the whole, since its founding in 2008, the CPE’s call for reform has propelled policy and legislation changes on both the state and federal level. The center maintains an ongoing commitment to breaking down the systemic racism that characterizes the criminal justice system, in hopes of one day achieving equitable outcomes for all.