Introduction to Just Reinvest NSW
Just Reinvest NSW (JR NSW) is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated towards improving justice outcomes for Aboriginal people. Indigenous Australians face disproportionate outcomes in the justice system, with incarceration rates significantly higher than those of non-Indigenous Australians. JR NSW strives to create long-term systemic change, with the aim to:
Amplify community voices and support the community to develop solutions.
Build relationships with key federal and state government officials and public servants who do and may influence justice and Indigenous affairs laws and policy.
Raise Awareness of Justice Reinvestment and educate government leaders and public servants to build and strengthen support for community-led solutions and drive collaboration and reform.
Grow and strengthen partnerships, networks and alliances to test and deliver the JR NSW policy agenda.
Project Overview
This collaboration was born from a need identified by JR NSW for a data-driven approach to improve justice outcomes. However, the solution would need to be community-tailored:
In Australia, data sovereignty is a key consideration, as Indigenous communities seek ownership and control of data to drive their own decision-making.
Additionally, each local community faces distinct challenges, from high rates of youth incarceration to specific patterns in court appearances.
The partnership between JR NSW and GDI was facilitated by a member of the Paul Ramsay Foundation, who recognised the value of a collaborative project between the two organisations.
The project team decided that a dashboard would provide the most impactful solution. The dashboard would enable each community to understand their unique challenges, quantify the impact in reducing incarceration or changing justice outcomes, and assist local community leaders in understanding how their time would be best utilised.
The dashboard can be found here: https://justreinvest.shinyapps.io/dashboard_shiny_v4/
Project Requirements
When the project commenced, the requirements for the dashboard were still undefined. The initiative started at an early stage of both the data lifecycle and data maturity for JR NSW. The team had identified a pressing need for data expertise, with the Data Community Manager proficient in R. However, the rest of the team and local community members were in the process of upskilling and gaining familiarity with data tools/methodologies.
To ensure the dashboard could be fully handed over as a sustainable codebase and data product, we developed end-to-end pipelines encompassing data ingestion, engineering, cleaning, and a user-friendly dashboard built in R.
Our approach to define project requirements and output involved close collaboration with JR NSW to determine what insights could be generated from publicly available data. We worked on addressing key research questions to guide the project:
Spending on the Criminal Justice System
How much money is allocated across sectors/services (e.g., police, courts, youth justice, incarceration)?
What is the per capita expenditure?
How does this spending vary by geography?
Comparison of ATSI and Non-Indigenous Outcomes
What are the differences in contact rates, crime rates, and incarceration rates?
How does expenditure compare across populations?
Economic Value Extracted from Communities
What is the financial impact of the criminal justice system on families and communities?
How could communities reclaim this economic value more efficiently?
Required Resources for Justice Reinvestment
What financial resources are needed to reduce interactions with the criminal justice system?
Over the course of the project, we identified that Questions 1 and 2 would form the foundation of the dashboard. These insights also contributed significantly to answering Question 4. Meanwhile, Questions 3 and 5 were led more directly by JR NSW, resulting in further research and publications to complement the dashboard’s findings.
Technical Methodology
To achieve the project’s objectives, we adopted a structured, collaborative approach based on two-week sprint cycles. This agile methodology allowed us to iteratively refine deliverables and incorporate feedback throughout the project.
Phase 1: Data Discovery and Preparation
The initial phase centred on identifying and sourcing datasets to answer the key research questions. We relied on three primary data sources:
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS): Provided population data for calculating per capita metrics.
Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR): Offered detailed justice figures, such as crime rates and incarceration statistics.
Report on Government Services (ROGS): Contained financial data linked to various justice outcomes.
After gathering these datasets, we developed scripts to automate data ingestion, cleaning, and transformation. Key transformations included converting absolute figures into per capita rates and harmonizing data formats for analysis. These scripts ensure that JR NSW can update the dashboard annually as new data becomes available.
Phase 2: Dashboard Development
The second phase focused on creating an interactive R Shiny dashboard using the prepared datasets. The dashboard included visualisations designed to highlight critical insights:
Community Summaries: Displaying justice outcomes, with estimates of potential savings from reducing incarceration rates or court appearances.
Map View: Allowing users to compare justice outcomes geographically.
Granular Persons of Interest Data: Offering detailed breakdowns of justice interactions.
Temporal Comparisons: Enabling analysis of state and federal trends over time.
Phase 3: Stakeholder Alignment and Handover
The final phase emphasised improving the dashboard's usability for non-technical stakeholders:
Refining visualisations to enhance interpretability.
Incorporating JR NSW branding.
Documenting the workflow and providing training for the JR NSW team to take full ownership of the dashboard as both a codebase and a data product.
Outcomes and Acknowledgement
The final dashboard quantifies, visualises, and assists in understanding the severity of Indigenous incarceration. It serves as a pivotal tool in advancing data-driven decision-making for JR NSW and local communities in NSW.
The dashboard was officially unveiled at the launch event for the JR NSW data hub, marking a significant milestone in the organization’s journey toward Indigenous data sovereignty.
Huge thanks to the volunteering team at GDI - Owen Forbes & Derek Wong for all their hard work, effort, and time in creating the dashboard.
By Kevin Wu (GDI Fellow)
About GDI:
The Good Data Institute (established 2019) is a registered not-for-profit organisation (ABN: 6664087941) that aims to give not-for-profits access to data analytics (D&A) support & tools. Our mission is to be the bridge between the not-for-profit world and the world of data analytics practitioners wishing to do social good. Using D&A, we identify, share, and help implement the most effective means for growing NFP people, organisations, and their impact.
Comments