Shelby County commissioners approved a round of funding to start a crime data dashboard administered by the University of Memphis on Monday, Feb. 9.
The school’s Center for Community Research and Evaluation, or CCRE, will coordinate data from the county’s various justice agencies and court systems to provide support to the agencies and courts. The center will serve as a “neutral third party” with a goal of improving the accessibility, transparency and usability of data.
The $300,000 funding resolution will cover the costs of one two-year term that runs through February 2028. The cost of additional terms is $125,000. The Memphis Crime Commission runs a similar dashboard that compiles Memphis Police Department statistics.
Coordination of crime data into a usable “dashboard” has been a priority of the commission in recent years. Nevertheless, commissioners have lingering questions about the proposal.
Perhaps more importantly, the program is also a priority of the Tennessee comptroller’s office. Last March, the office presented commissioners with a list of 18 “metrics” to prioritize. The tally includes data from the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, along with agencies in the county’s criminal and civil justice pipelines.
“There’s a lot of pressure from the comptroller’s office,” said CCRE Director Jonathan Bennett, Ph.D.
Despite a lack of dedicated funding, the Shelby County General Sessions Court Clerk’s Office has served as an informal incubator for the program. Last year, first-term clerk Tami Sawyer used $15,000 of her department’s budget to cover its beta stage.
“In the wake of having been in office for the last year and a half, I have noticed a huge amount of requests for data that are not tabulated or immediately accessible from our different court divisions,” said Sawyer.
Sawyer, a former Shelby County commissioner, will present the results to the board during the upcoming Feb. 18 committee meetings.
“That will kind of give you a glimpse of what the broader project is and the advanced capabilities of the University of Memphis,” said Sawyer. “The data has been presented in a clean way where they are not leaning politically one way or the other.”
Commissioner Henri Brooks said Sawyer’s endorsement “settles me a bit that this is OK.” Nevertheless, doubts remain. Aside from the timing, which was placed squarely on state leaders, there were concerns about how the data will be presented. Brooks, for one, would like to see data presented district by district. ZIP codes are another data set requested during the discussion.
Bennett assured members the requests could be met through a simple tweak in the memorandum of understanding. Oversight will be conducted by CCRE, the County Commission and the data providers. Future funding would likely be pursued through federal, state and private grants, a common practice for CCRE.
“Once we get it started, it’s really the foundation for sustaining it in many ways,” said Bennett.
Voting in favor of the resolution were Brandon Morrison, Mark Whaley, Miska Clay Bibbs, Erika Sugarmon, Mick Wright, David Bradford, Amber Mills, Britney Thornton, Chairwoman Shante Avant and Brooks.
During the meeting, commissioners began the process of filling the vacancy created by former member Edmund Ford’s resignation on Feb. 8. The two-term member’s departure was a condition of his deal for pleading guilty to five counts of federal tax evasion.
Applications are being accepted through Feb. 20. Interviews will take place during the March 4 committee meetings. An appointment is scheduled to take place on March 9. It will end in August, following the county election.
