Diasporic Citizenship: Colombian Victims Abroad
This research project seeks answers to three sets of questions related to data and decision-making in criminal justice institutions:
- How do district attorneys’ efforts to collect, analyze, and disseminate administrative data on criminal justice processing relate to broader institutional goals?
- How can administrative data be harnessed to understand bias and inequality in the criminal justice system and efforts to address them, and what are its limits?
- How does the public understand data on criminal justice decision-making? How does transparency relate to public trust and perceptions of legitimacy in criminal legal processes?
We answer these questions with a detailed mixed-method analysis of efforts to ensure trust and transparency. With access to administrative data and information from a prosecutor’s office, we will analyze and evaluate how prosecutorial decision-making and diversion programs are applied to cases, focusing on identifying individual and case characteristics and context associated with prosecutorial decisions and the likelihood of diversion over a five-year period. Through interviews, we will analyze socio-legal processes that produce the administrative data, specifically how social constructs like race and crime are defined in practice. Finally, we will design a user experiment to test the effects of variation in data visualization and presentation of court data on both public trust in the state and effectiveness in transmitting information about prosecutorial proceedings and outcomes, and racial inequalities therein, to the general public.
This work is generously supported by the SBS Dean’s Research Council, the Institute for Diversity Science, and the Faculty Research/Healey Endowment Grant.
Data-Driven Justice and the Progressive Prosecution Agenda: Trust and Transparency in State Institutions
The Colombian government’s Unit for Victims has been engaged in research activities to understand Colombians abroad, with a 2020 survey finding that fears about deportation, restrictive migration laws, and access to employment are critical concerns. In light of these findings, the Colombian Unit for Victims sought international academic partners to carry out additional research on the experiences of Colombian victims abroad. The Unit selected our team to spearhead the efforts in the U.S.
Using seed funding from the UMass Amherst College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS) during the summer and fall of 2021, we conducted 21 individual interviews with a random sample of Colombian migrants in the U.S. and three members of the Victims Unit team. We also conducted three focus groups with victims who have been in the U.S. for varying amounts of time. Our findings reveal that restrictive immigration laws shape victim-migrants’ experiences and understandings, with notable effects related to family status. Our ongoing work seeks to build upon this study with a broader sample and with participant-engaged visual arts.
On November 10, 2022, the Colombian Consulate in NYC hosted an exhibition with photos taken by Colombian victims living in the U.S. This project is generously supported by the Humanity United Foundation and by the Colombian Victims Unit.