Investigate West
Project: Orders of Protection
The team aimed to assess judges’ roles in deciding protection orders and domestic violence cases, what those factors were and the altering consequences for people involved.
Seattle, Washington
https://www.invw.org/
Interview with Jacob Fries, executive director
Time:
14 months
Technology used:
Excel
Datawrapper.de
How it started:
The story started with the question about one judge who himself had been involved in some domestic violence situations, and they wanted to examine how he had ruled in domestic violence cases which led to the question: “How could we fairly judge that without understanding how other judges are doing it?”
So the team decided to create a baseline to assess all the judges and to find the rate of approval across the entire state.
Challenges:
The initial data set that the newsroom had counted on turned out to have flaws that weren’t known to the state offices they obtained it from. So to resolve it, they obtained additional datasets and ensured they were merged together correctly.
This allowed the team to interrogate the data in ways they could draw conclusions.
Data/Documents:
Initial data from the Washington State’s administrator of the courts
County level data
Local court system data
Impact:
The story was republished in multiple outlets across the state, including the Seattle Times.
The newsroom also received feedback from policymakers and lawmakers about some issues they wanted to address illuminated in the project, such as how particular challenges face low income, domestic violence survivors, and how they're often having to navigate the system on their own in a pretty stressful situation.
Advice:
Focus on your data early - snuff out the holes quickly and do fact-checking and scrutiny on the front end and not at the last.
Tap into people who have the skills you need , instead of trying to learn a skill you need only once.