Full Disclosure Project

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.

Some of the Project accomplishments:

1) BUILDING AND SUPPORTING TECHNOLOGY TO TRACK LAW ENFORCEMENT MISCONDUCT

Worked with The Legal Aid Society of New York to open-source their revolutionary database application and made it functional for other jurisdictions
Released seven upgraded versions of the software (“The FDP Application”) based on user feedback and testing to improve the ingestion and analysis of law enforcement misconduct data
Established partnerships with four data science and tech-for-good programs to build tools using artificial intelligence to automate the ingestion and collection of misconduct data

2) EMPOWERING DEFENDERS WITH TOOLS AND TRAINING

Established 5 state-wide and 2 city-wide databases of police misconduct in defender offices, collectively tracking over 150,000 officers from nearly 2,000 agencies
Collected and processed over 17,000 records of misconduct with partners into structured, analyzable data
Consulted with over 90 public defenders, innocence organizations, private defense firms, and defender associations on how to begin tracking police misconduct
Created free online resource guides for “Getting Started Tracking Police Misconduct”, including systems for under-resourced organizations

3) ADVOCATING FOR POLICE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Co-hosted three convenings 1) to bring together practitioners to share best practices on obtaining, organizing, and opening police misconduct data 2) to build a model for how civil society can work together to capitalize on emerging policing data and 3) to inaugurate a nation-wide conversation on tactical approaches to combat systemic injustice
Consulted with White House officials, policymakers, and advocates about legislation to support police transparency and best practices for data collection
Presented at 15 conferences, webinars, and roundtables on law enforcement misconduct and actionable steps to improve police transparency

The project laid a strong foundation for the future of defense that others can build on in the years to come. The defender databases and software will continue to operate with support from Techtivist.

NACDL thanks all those who provided financial support for the project – Roc Nation, Sony Music, Daniel and Tanya Schnyder, Barry Scheck and Dorothy Rick, and additional individual contributions through the NACDL Foundation for Criminal Justice – and The Full Disclosure Project Team – Director Julie Ciccolini, Senior Developer Tristan Chambers, and Project Coordinator Margaret Ringler.

Our Resources

Tools to get started finding and storing data
Webinar: Best Practices for Tracking Police Misconduct
Known police accountability databases (as of 2023)
Obtaining, Organizing, and Opening Police Misconduct Data: a convening report
Dismantling the Blue Wall of Silence: Why Every Defender Should Track Law Enforcement Misconduct (2023 culminating report)
Full Disclosure Project Application Codebase – available upon request

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