State’s Attorney Kim Foxx Goes Public with Crime Data

The Cook County State’s Attorney Office has launched a new data dashboard online that allows the people to view crime statistics, such as felony offenses like murder, and shows all protocols and procedures used when processing crime cases. Photo by Wendell Hutson
The Cook County State’s Attorney Office has launched a new data dashboard online that allows the people to view crime statistics, such as felony offenses like murder, and shows all protocols and procedures used when processing crime cases. Photo by Wendell Hutson

State’s Attorney Kim Foxx Goes Public with Crime Data

The Cook

BY WENDELL HUTSON, Contributing Writer

Transparency is one thing Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said she wants her office to always maintain, which is why she recently went public with crime data.

“My goal is to provide as much information to the public as possible. By making this data available to the public, it will help them to better understand how this office handles felony cases and how those cases make its way through the justice system from start to finish,” Foxx told the Citizen. “And no other state’s attorney office in the country makes crime stats available to the public like we are doing. By doing so, it allows people to hold me accountable for how I run this office.”

The new data dashboard is available online at cookcountystatesattorney.org/about/data-reports/ and it explains (in detail) all protocols and procedures used by the state’s attorney office when processing felony cases, such as retail theft, burglary and robbery to homicide, possession of an illegal firearm and even driving under the influence. It even breaks down the race of offenders for individual charges and has stats as far back as 2010. The portal, which is updated daily, also shows how many felony cases the Chicago Police Department and suburban police departments refer to the state’s attorney office annually for prosecution and how many were approved and rejected.

But not all felony cases are approved though.

“Every felony charge has to be approved by my office before charges can be filed,” said Foxx. “The police can file drugs and misdemeanor charges without our approval but anything else has to be called into our Felony Review Unit, which operates 24 hours a day. Crimes do not stop which is why our attorneys in this unit work 12 hour shifts.”

The state’s attorney office no longer prosecutes retail theft offenses as a felony unless it involves $1,000 or more of stolen merchandise.

“We wouldn’t approve this charge as a felony but the police could still file it as a misdemeanor without approval,” she added. “There are a lot of assumptions about crime stats but this dashboard will help educate people about the real truth.”

For example, Chicago is known for its murders, but over the last two years there have been more retail theft and burglary charges filed by the state’s attorney office than homicides. In fact, there have been more felony charges filed for battery than homicides.

In the newly created position of chief data officer, Matthew Saniie, was tasked with putting together the dashboard.

“Open data is a hallmark of good government, and this data release represents a significant step forward for the use of open data in prosecution,” said Saniie. “These tables contain over 45 million data points, representing over 300,000 distinct cases, which is a huge amount of data for a government entity to make available to the public.”

And recognizing that not everyone is tech-savvy and may not be able to navigate through the website, Sainne said he plans to continue studying ways to make the information more user friendly.

Keeping an open line of communication between her office and the public is what Foxx said she wants to do.

“For too long, the work of the criminal justice system has been largely a mystery. That lack of openness undermines the legitimacy of the criminal justice system,” said Foxx. “It is important for the public to know about the work of this office and our commitment to prosecute crime in a manner that is fair, equitable and just.”

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