Police Transparency in the 21st Century: Embracing Resident Feedback
The South Bend Police Department’s data transparency page was first created in 2016 and has evolved iteratively over the last few years. It has been a great resource for media and residents alike to see data and metrics surrounding the work of our Police officers. However, earlier this year, we wanted to learn more deeply about what residents would like to see and identify opportunities to improve the overall resident experience on the transparency hub. We held an SB UX session that was open to the public so that residents and stakeholders could come and provide feedback on how the transparency hub could improve. We also have been making these changes in response to some of the feedback from South Bend’s 21st Century Policing assessment, which was developed by 21CP. With this feedback in hand, we have been working in the months since to produce a resident-centered transparency hub.
Changes made based on resident feedback
The newest version of the Police transparency hub is a full data portal and was released on November 30, 2020. Check out some of the local news coverage here. It was important that the new design and layout of the transparency hub portal be direct responses to the feedback from the SB UX session. Some changes that address this feedback are highlighted below.
- “It’s hard to navigate” → Added clear navigation
2. Disjointed organization → Content is now organized by category
3. “It’s long and text heavy” → Reduced and broke up large blocks of text
4. Participants enjoy the dashboards and visuals → Additional dashboard features and maps were included
Featured dashboard
One of the featured reworks to the transparency hub dashboards, is the Crime Dashboard. It has received a complete overhaul in color and in function. Below is the previous version of the Crime Dashboard.
Previous Crime Dashboard
It has been transformed into a snapshot portal of its own, using the same principles of the main pages. The previous pages of the Crime Dashboard were maintained but, now there is home page that greets you when it first loads. It includes descriptions of what can be found within each page of the dashboard, its features, and update schedule. Underneath each description is a quick navigation button so that you can go straight to what you’re looking for.
New Crime Dashboard developed with residents
Additionally, there is a brand-new data page — the Incident Map. Based on the much-loved features of Crime Reports, the Incident Map has the locations of incidents related to serious crimes in our community and is updated weekly. You can filter by date, time, the specific type of crime you are curious about, and then view various metrics on what you’ve selected.
Incident Map Dashboards with Filters Applied
For example, you want to see calls related to burglary during a recent week; you can select the date range, choose that incident type, and then view the details of each incident and their proportion or count. Hovering over a point also brings up the details and you can zoom into specific areas of town. Then, if you wish to see the big picture of year-over-year crimes, you can simply return to the home page and navigate to the aggregates of these same crimes over time! This flow seeks to provide an uninterrupted experience of viewing crime data without the need for multiple tools or links.
Curious to see the improved Police Transparency Hub? Find it here!
