SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Legal Newsline) - California Attorney General Kamala Harris recently commented on Assembly Bill 2524, the OpenJustice Data Act of 2016, which was introduced by state Assembly member Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, and sponsored by Harris.
Harris praised California Gov. Jerry Brown for signing the bill into law.
“Data and technology have the power to dramatically increase transparency and accountability in our criminal justice system,” Harris said in a statement. “I applaud Gov. Brown for signing this legislation into law, which will bring criminal justice data publication into the 21st Century. I thank Assembly member Irwin for standing with me to support the adoption of technology and data to improve our criminal justice system.”
The OpenJustice Data Act works to build transparency in California’s criminal justice system. The system will develop reports on all crime in California -- creating a portal that highlights statistical summaries for number of arrests, complaints against peace officers, hate crime offenses, and law enforcement officers killed or assaulted.
“Right now we are sitting on mountains of valuable criminal justice data that local law enforcement work hard to provide in the public interest, ” Irwin said. “We need to make sure this information is available to the public and that we are using it effectively. AB 2524 is a common sense measure that will help bring California into the 21st Century.”