Aborn & Bratton Introduce New CompStat-Like Plan for DA Crimefighting
NEW YORK- Richard Aborn, candidate for Manhattan DA, today unveiled PreventStat, a detailed proposal to improve the use of technology in the DA’s office, and increase accountability and oversight analysis. Aborn was joined by former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, the pioneer of CompStat, which has become a standard method for police departments across the world for collecting and analyzing data, and making departments more effective.
“Like Bill Bratton’s CompStat approach revolutionized how police departments tracked and cracked down on crime, this new PreventStat model will allow the DA’s office to more effectively prevent crime by centralizing its data centers, analyzing patterns, and producing measurable results,” Aborn said. “Not only will this enable us to prevent crime more effectively, but the efficiencies PreventStat creates will save us valuable tax dollars as well.”
Bratton, now the Chief of the LAPD, offered his endorsement of the plan.
“PreventStat is an innovative crime fighting tool which will provide real oversight and analysis so that the DA can determine the most effective way to crack down on crimes before they occur,” Bratton said. “It worked for the NYPD in the 90’s and it’ll work for the 21st century Manhattan DA’s office. Richard Aborn has been a global leader in making law enforcement organizations more effective and efficient, and I believe his plan to apply tested technologies and methods as DA will be a great benefit to Manhattan residents.”
PreventStat is modeled on Compstsat, the NYPD’s organizational management tool developed under Bratton in 1994, which is largely credited with improved departmental operations and an historic drop in crime. A data driven method of policing, Compstat sheets are a composite of the bureau reports from across the city, produced weekly, which detail the rates of arrest for various crimes, including the percent increase or decrease over time. CompStat was especially well known for analyzing data from each individual precinct and then assigning numbers and types of offices at various locations depending on crime patterns revealed by the data.
Similarly, PreventStat is designed to be a centralized method of data collection across agencies with which the DA has contact, so as to identify the best program for a certain offender and then track their progress to determine measurable results. For instance, although New York City collects statistics regarding youths in the justice system, data is overlapping, drawn from multiple databases: the Departments of Juvenile Justice, Correction, Law, and Probation as well as the Administration for Children’s Services and the New York Police Department. There is no centralized collection of data that would best inform all relevant parties of the rates of crime and the efficacy of current programs, nor where and when these crimes are most likely to occur.
Since the Manhattan DA works with the police, courts, corrections officials, and many social service providers, it is uniquely positioned to lead a collaborative effort to improve data collection and analysis. As such, Aborn’s proposal includes a new position in the D.A.’s office – Effectiveness Czar – to lead a system-wide oversight analysis to pinpoint best practices. By tracking the progress of individual offenders in treatment programs, the District Attorney’s office will be able to recommend the most appropriate sentencing schemes and make better use of taxpayer dollars. In New York State, even the cost of one-year of residential treatment (the most expensive type of treatment) is far less costly than one year in prison ($21,000 vs. $44,000) [Drop The Rock Fact Sheet]. Unfortunately, there is very little data on what works best and virtually no systematic studies of individual programs in New York.
In addition, PreventStat falls under the well-accepted role of a prosecutor’s office to monitor the performance of charged individuals, only PreventStat will monitor specific programs to assess results and determine efficacy.
Aborn noted that Compstat is an effective law enforcement tool because it provides a police department with the ability to improve police performance by doing a number of things:
• It permits the constant monitoring of crime data.
• It permits allocation of police resources to those areas most in need of a police response and to measure the on going need for those resources.
• It allows police to more quickly detect crime patterns.
Similarly, PreventStat will:
• Permit the constant monitoring of data about individual offender’s progress
• Permit the allocation of taxpayer dollars to those programs that are most likely to be effective
• Allow the District Attorney’s office to determine which treatment programs are likely to work for which offenders
Richard Aborn and Commissioner Bratton have worked together extensively in New York, and now Los Angeles, where Aborn has recommended and implemented several sweeping changes to the office, including the use of analytical technology to improve police efforts.
In recent weeks, Aborn has also rolled out a series of serious policy proposals on juvenile justice reform, wrongful convictions, and cracking down on gun trafficking.
Richard Aborn has devoted his career to innovative ways of fighting crime the right way. He started his law enforcement career prosecuting violent felonies under Robert Morgenthau. He masterminded the Brady gun control bill — and became the NRA’s worst enemy. He was a leader in the expansion of the use of DNA evidence to both convict criminals and exonerate the innocent. As the managing partner of a law firm, he has supervised scores of attorneys. And his independent investigation of the NYPD took on police misconduct and brutality.
To date, Aborn has been endorsed by Commissioner Bill Bratton; the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys; the Working Families Party; Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy; State Senators Bill Perkins, Eric Schneiderman, Jose Serrano, Daniel Squadron, and Eric Adams (also the co-founder of the city-wide group, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care); Assembly Members Jonathan Bing, Deborah Glick, Michelle Schimmel, Richard Gottfried, Brian Kavanagh, Daniel O’Donnell, and Linda Rosenthal; Councilmembers Gale Brewer, and Melissa Mark Viverito; former DA candidates Catherine Abate and Richard Davis; long-time progressive voice Katrina vanden Heuvel; Million Mom March; New Yorkers Against Gun Violence;
criminal justice advocate Jeffrey Deskovic; and numerous political clubs.
For more information on Aborn and his surging campaign, please visit: http://www.abornforda.com.
