Jeff-alytics Podcast Episode 4: How Jail Data Can Inform Criminal Justice Policies with Anna Harvey
A new podcast for a new day!
The Jeff-alytics podcast is back with Episode 4 featuring brilliant NYU professor Anna Harvey. If you missed last week’s episode with the Philip Bump you can still catch it on the Internet.
My guest today is Anna Harvey.
Anna is Professor of Politics, Affiliated Professor of Data Science, Affiliated Professor of Law, and the founder and Director of the Public Safety Lab at New York University. She is the author of three books and numerous peer-reviewed articles, including work on misdemeanor prosecution, crime victimization, fiscal incentives in law enforcement, and voting from jail. Her paper (along with Amanda Agan and Jennifer Doleac) on the benefits of misdemeanor nonprosecution has been enormously influential on my thinking (and I’m sure that of many others!).
One of the NYU Public Safety Lab’s projects is the Jail Data Initiative, a large-scale effort to collect daily individual-level jail records in over 1,000 local jails in the United States. This is among the coolest — if not the very coolest — projects involving public safety data that I know of. It combines amazing vision with a really impressive technical achievement that we have looked to for inspiration while building and automating the Real-Time Crime Index.
In this episode, I talk with Anna about the challenges of data collection, why understanding jail populations is essential for meaningful reform, and how accurate data can shape criminal justice policies. It’s a cool conversation so give it a listen below or wherever you get your podcasts!
As always, I’d be grateful if you subscribe so you get future episodes when they're released and if you feel like leaving a (glowing) review that’d be great too.
If you haven’t listened to the last episode, an interview with Philip Bump, you should also do that! Next week I talk with former Kentucky State Senator Whitney Westerfield about criminal justice reform and the challenges of having triplets.
The Jeff-alytics Podcast Playlist:
Episode 1 - Michael Lewis
Episode 2 - Laura Arnold
Episode 3 - Philip Bump
This was really great. What a fantastics guest! I've been thinking lately about how giant the wholes in recidivism data appear to be, and how much use we could make out of them if someone started filling them in. This is going to really do a world of good.