Here's The First-Ever Data Dashboard Published By The Lake County State's Attorney

WAUKEGAN, IL — The Lake County State's Attorneys Office launched a data dashboard on Thursday showing information about the county's criminal law system to the public for the first time.

The dashboard currently contains data from the Lake County Sheriff's Office about jail admissions, information from Lake County Circuit Court about criminal case filings and information about employee diversity from the office of State's Attorney Eric Rinehart.

Rinehart, a former public defender from Highwood, pledged during his campaign to increase transparency in the chief county prosecutor's office. He said he was excited to see the new website go live this week and looked forward to making more data available.

"We are committed to building and using the data infrastructure needed now, and in the decades to come, to make sure we do our jobs to the best of our ability," Rinehart said in a statement. “This dashboard is a critical part of that data infrastructure as well as our dedication to be a transparent, accountable, and fair prosecutor’s office."

While data on the dashboard about charges is limited — the only data from this year consists of quarterly totals of the number of adult felony, misdemeanor and misdemeanor DUI charges filed — Rinehart's office plans to eventually add data showing the disposition of cases and number of cases charged for a given offense. There is no timeline yet for the additions.

According to Steve Spagnolo, a spokesperson for Rinehart, the dashboard was created by a data coordinator whose position was fully funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Safety and Justice Challenge, a national initiative to reduce jail populations. The Center for Criminal Justice Research, Policy, and Practice at Loyola University Chicago also contributed consulting services to the dashboard project, which began in March, Spagnolo said.

The Cook County State's Attorney's Office launched a data dashboard created with funding from the Safety and Justice Challenge in 2019. The office's felony dashboard includes data showing how cases are filed, how they end and what sentences are imposed.

Spagnolo told Patch the state's attorney's office in Lake County does not yet have a system in place to record information about its decisions to file felony charges. He said the office expects to have such a system online next year.

In February, the Safety and Justice Challenge announced the award of a $700,000 grant to the county to support efforts to decrease incarceration and crime rates.

“We must confront the devastating impacts of mass incarceration by a system that over-polices and over-incarcerates Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people,” Laurie Garduque, the director of criminal justice for the MacArthur Foundation, said in a release announcing the grant.

“Over the past five years, the Safety and Justice Challenge has safely reduced the ineffective and harmful use of jails, while learning that jail population reduction alone does not undo the racial inequities perpetuated by an unjust system and our nation’s history of systemic racism," she added. "We are committed to supporting cities and counties as they reimagine a definition of safety that is inclusive of all communities and makes meaningful progress towards our goal of ending racial and ethnic disparities in jails.”

Data from the sheriff's office shows the overall jail population was on the decline even before the coronavirus pandemic, which led to a dramatic decrease in the number of charges filed and the number of defendants detained while awaiting trial.

Despite that, the number of Latino people held at Lake County Jail increased by 78 percent between 2013 and 2019.

Following the outbreak of COVID-19 in Illinois last year, the number of people detained at the Waukegan jail fell by more than 36 percent. The jail admission rate for white defendants dropped by 42 percent, but by only 29 percent for Black defendants.

As a result, Black people made up nearly 39 percent of those ordered held at the jail, despite making up only 7.5 percent of Lake County's population. White people made up more than 35 percent of jail admissions, and Latino people represented 22 percent.

Data from the clerk of the circuit court shows that the total number of criminal cases filed dropped 45 percent between the start of 2016 and the middle of 2021. During the same period, misdemeanor DUI charges fell by 12 percent.