John Jay Report / by Jason Tashea

For the last few months, I've been surveying emerging justice technologies with the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Today, we released our report entitled Emerging Technologies and the Need for Evaluation. The aim of the report was to introduce justice stakeholders to the larger trends of government and civic technology, survey a variety of projects from around the country, and finally provide actionable steps to research and evaluate these projects as to improve their impact. A concise summary of where we want this work to go can be found in a piece I wrote for Civicist.

To everyone that had a part in this project, thank you. A little over a year ago, I quit my stable, compensated with money job to evangelize and build new tools that improve the criminal justice system. While there is plenty of work to be done, it is immensely fulfilling to have John Jay support this work and believe, as I do, that it is important. 

This project wouldn't have been possible without the forward looking interest (and funding) of Jeff Butts of the Research and Evaluation Center, University President Jeremy Travis, and John Jay General Counsel Marjorie Singer. Further, this report would have been nothing but for the dozens of people that gave up their time to speak to me about their work. Without them and their efforts, there would have been no report.

I hope to have more to share as this vision begins to materialize in the coming weeks and months. For now, it's back to work.