What Justice Data Requires Beyond Access: A Conversation with Chief Judge Donald R. Johnson

In my work supporting strategic communications with the Civic Impact team at Measures for Justice, I’ve spent time thinking about what it really takes for justice data to be understood, not just accessed.

Measures for Justice works to make criminal justice data more transparent and usable so that communities, practitioners, and decision-makers can better understand how the system is functioning. Within that, the Civic Impact team focuses on how that data shows up in real communities. Not just as information, but as something people can engage with, question, and use.

Learn more about Measures For Justice here.

In this moment, transparency is being asked to do a lot of work. Data keeps getting positioned as the answer, as if access alone can repair trust. But access doesn’t automatically lead to understanding, and it certainly doesn’t guarantee confidence in the systems behind the numbers.

That tension came up in a conversation I had with Chief Judge Donald R. Johnson. We weren’t talking about data as the end of the work. We were talking about what it actually means to lead inside systems where trust is fragile, accountability is real, and numbers don’t explain themselves.

One thing he was very clear about is the limit of data on its own. Making information available can support transparency, but only if people understand what they’re seeing and why it matters. Without that context, data can quietly create more distance. It can feel technical, inaccessible, or disconnected from lived experience, even when it’s technically “open.”

From his perspective, data is most useful when it helps leaders slow down and ask better questions. It doesn’t replace judgment. It sharpens it. When judges and policymakers can clearly see patterns, they’re better positioned to notice disparities early and respond to them instead of unintentionally reinforcing them.

We also talked about community input and why data policies can’t be shaped in isolation. When communities are part of the conversation, data stops being just a reporting requirement. It starts to reflect real conditions. It surfaces concerns sooner. Over time, it earns legitimacy instead of demanding it.

That conversation connects directly to The Louisiana Data Landscape: A Divided Front, a report that examines how fragmented justice data can be across agencies and jurisdictions. What our conversation reinforced is that access alone doesn’t solve that problem. Structure, framing, and care are what make information usable and trustworthy. View the full report here.

What I value most about conversations like this is the chance to slow down and sit with what the work is actually asking of leaders. Justice systems don’t change just because data exists. They change when leaders are willing to engage with what the data is pointing to, and when communities can see themselves reflected in how information is gathered, interpreted, and shared.

If you’re interested in the full conversation with Chief Judge Donald R. Johnson, you can watch it and stay connected to ongoing insights around justice, transparency, and data accessibility by joining the MFJ Collective newsletter here.