ORS: Racial & Ethnic Disparity Home
CURRENT - ORS: Racial/Ethnic Disparity (CLEAR Act)
The Office of Research and Statistics (ORS) is mandated to report annual data from multiple decision points in the criminal justice system pursuant to Senate Bill 2015-185, the Community Law Enforcement Action Reporting Act (CLEAR Act). The "Background" section below presents information necessary to interpret correctly the CLEAR Act Report & Dashboard. Additionally, resources and links can be found below on reducing disparity in the criminal justice system.
REPORT DOCUMENT: 2015 CLEAR Act Report (pdf)
DASHBOARD: 2015 CLEAR Act
- Background
Reporting pursuant to the S.B 2015-185 CLEAR Act must include a report document and display data in a dashboard. These data must reflect decisions made at multiple points in the justice system process. Data are provided for analysis by law enforcement agencies, the Judicial Department, and the adult Parole Board. The CLEAR Act also requires that data be displayed by race/ethnicity, by gender and by offense type.
These two reporting mechanisms (the document and the data dashboard) should be viewed together because each provides unique analyses and summaries. The dashboard displays data related to arrests and summons, court filings and probation revocations. Only the dashboard includes detailed offense categories, that is, 17 arrest offense categories and 25 court case crime categories. Only the report document provides analyses of data submitted by the adult Parole Board and the impact of concurrent cases and prior history on court sentences.
Because it is difficult to identify patterns in analyses that involve too many crime categories, the report and the dashboard present a summary of the findings by collapsing offenses into four broad crime categories: Drugs, Property, Violent, and Other. Individual crime types within these categories are included in the dashboard. Some crime types include multiple types of offenses. Please see Appendix A and Appendix B in the associated report document for information on crime classification. The crime types include inchoate offenses (attempt, conspiracy, and solicitation).
Race/ethnicity was determined using a statistical model which is described in Appendix C of the report document.
Finally, the cases represented in the arrests, filings, sentences, and parole board sections are not necessarily the same cases. This is due to a lag between when an arrest results in a filing, when a filing results in a sentence, and when an offender is paroled.- Reducing Disparity
The following resources are offered for individuals, criminal justice planning committees, and interdisciplinary teams addressing disproportionate minority impact.
The Brennan Center (at the New York University School of Law) offers a report with guidance on strategies to reduce disparities in local jurisdictions:
Site: Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Jails: Recommendations for Local Practice
Report: "Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Jails: Recommendations for Local Practice (2015)"The Sentencing Project provides an Issues Section on Racial Justice with links to reports, policy briefs and a newsletter. (See also, Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers (2020))
National Research Council, Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach (2013). See Chapter 8: Reducing Racial/Ethnic Disparities.
The W. Haywood Burns Institute is a national think tank and technical assistance provider, working to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities. The Institute works by facilitating collaboration between system stakeholders and community members as they apply a racial equity lens to data-driven justice reform efforts.
Prosecutorial Performance Indicators (PPIs) "measure performance toward three goals: Capacity & Efficiency, Community Safety & Well-being, and Fairness & Justice. The PPI website presents the indicators, guides, training materials, and sample data from partner offices to illustrate how the PPIs work in diverse jurisdictions."
The National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys offers an article that "presents a framework for understanding the sources of racial disparity in the criminal justice system and suggests actions that defense attorneys can take to address the problem." See, How Defense Attorneys Can Eliminate Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice.