Due Process & the Grand Jury: Protecting Targets and Witnesses

The grand jury has long drawn criticism for failing to serve its purpose as a shield against unwarranted charges. Recently a new charge has been leveled: that prosecutorial influence over the grand jury permits law enforcement misconduct to go unpunished. Both facets of the issue are discussed in turn by two distinguished panels of experts.

Join NACDL’s Full Disclosure Project to hear about our new resources for tracking law enforcement misconduct. We've compiled our best practices for beginning or improving your processes of tracking police misconduct data. We’ll cover hidden places to look for data, how to create a feasible collection plan, and effective systems for organizing your data. We’ll show approaches from the advanced and involved to the low-tech and simple - so you can apply these methods with whatever resources you have.

Defenders start from the proposition that something went wrong with the police case.

But how do things go wrong?

Defense attorneys often point to “one big screw-up” or “one twisted cop” in telling the story of a client’s innocence to a jury. In reality, the best explanation of how things go wrong is usually an “organizational accident” – a lot of small errors that alone would not be enough to cause something to go wrong, but when put together can cause catastrophe.

This panel highlights policing reforms adopted over the last year and what still needs to be done.

20^th Annual State Criminal Justice Network Conference
August 18-20, 2021 | Held Virtually

At least 85,000 law enforcement officers across the U.S. have been investigated or disciplined for misconduct over the past decade according to a USA Today investigation. Police disciplinary records are confidential in roughly 21 states, meaning people facing charges aren’t able to learn about the background of involved officers. Learn why transparency is vital and current state legislative efforts to allow for increased transparency of police misconduct records.

NACDL's 19th Annual State Criminal Justice Network Conference
August 17-19, 2020 | Held Virtually

For decades, law enforcement misconduct has been shrouded in secrecy, hidden behind a “blue wall of silence.” Until independent projects cropped up in 2012, even simple statistics were unknown. From 2020-2023, NACDL’s Full Disclosure Project helped defenders build databases tracking misconduct on over 150,000 law enforcement officers. This report examines how defense lawyers have pioneered the movement to track police misconduct, the impact of their work, and recommendations for other defenders looking to join the movement. [Released September 2023]

From 2020-2023, NACDL’s Full Disclosure Project disrupted the culture of secrecy that shields law enforcement misconduct by building technology to track law enforcement misconduct, empowering defenders with tools and training, and advocating for greater police transparency and accountability.

NACDL’s Full Disclosure Project co-hosted a 4-day online convening in collaboration with the Invisible Institute and WITNESS in November 2021 to bring together practitioners to discuss the potential benefits and harms of collecting and disseminating policing data and connect data collections efforts with organizing aimed at effecting change. The report aims to share the key principles, tensions and practices that we discussed; help guide ongoing conversations and development of best practices; and inform future project planning and funding decisions. [Released March 2023]

The following articles provide guidance on how to get started for anyone interested in tracking police misconduct. They cover hidden places to look for data, how to create a feasible collection plan, and effective systems for organizing your data. The approaches range from the advanced and involved to the low-tech and simple – so you can apply these methods with whatever resources you have. Whether you're a defender, NGO, or community activist, use these to better track police misconduct in your community.

Before choosing a tool for organizing misconduct data, establish your project scope with a data collection plan. This will identify your priority agencies, data sources, and collaborators. Once you have a data collection plan, consider how you want to store that data.

We simplified the FDP Application's data model and put it into the online spreadsheet called Airtable. Here are instructions on how to use FDP's simplified data model on the free online platform Airtable to track police misconduct data.

If you choose to use a shared folder, follow these best practices to make it easier to sort and process the data.

The Full Disclosure Project application allows collaboration with multiple organizations in a single database, sharing as much information as desired while protecting legally privileged information. There can only be one host of the application who maintains the database on their server. However, if desired, the host organization can grant access to external organizations (called guest organizations) to view and edit data. Any system users will be assigned to the organization(s) to which they belong, which will ensure that they only see what the organization is permitted to view.

This page describes the skills and responsibilities that can be useful when running the Full Disclosure Project (FDP) application. Use it to allocate responsibilities among existing staff or to guide your hiring process.

Here are resources for sending public record requests