Thread by @heyproto

Welcome everyone to the live tweets from the PROTO-Agami meetup for folks working with data on law and justice. @AgamiHub #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub Judicial data can inform and transform the stories that the media can tell. Today, we can learn to increase the use of judicial data. We'll hear about how it has been used, and also discuss other ways to use it to tell stories and drive change. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub Our panelists: @sh_devulapalli works on stories that use data including some from the legal system and @renukasane is from the NIPFP. @VakashaS, ex-lawyer who now writes about the courts and developments in legislation and policy will moderate. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS .@sh_devulapalli says, "When we do stories, the objective is to make sure our audience understands what the issue is about. But we are expected to understand an issue in three days and explain it with the rigour of an academic paper." #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS For instance, @sh_devulapalli explains, they tried to determine the influence of a Supreme Court judgment by how often a case has been cited by other cases. The idea was to list these cases and explain why they were important. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS "Since the Supreme Court website wasn't useful at all, the wonderful @indiankanoon was our source of all data." They created a network graph but their editor did not let them unleash this immense beast on an unsuspecting reader. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS @indiankanoon .@sh_devulapalli points to a recent story (bit.ly/2NiogPS) where they looked at the relationship between pendency and vacancies in the court system, and between pendency and indices such as poverty. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS @indiankanoon “It might look like all this data was nicely available and formatted. But that is not the case. Sources include the Supreme Court, the data compiled by @PRSLegislative, and the Court News newsletter which has been discontinued." #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS @indiankanoon @PRSLegislative An aspect of this kind of journalism is that data is not always in formats we like, it is not updated, and it comes with a lot of caveats. "Getting to a stage where we can get something statistically accurate and also makes sense takes time." #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS .@renukasane has actually gone about collecting data for her scholarship. She is explaining why she had to do that instead of relying on other sources. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS She continues from where Harsha left off - to understand pendency, we need to understand the history of cases (what were the types of cases and where did they come in) - things start to get difficult because there isn't one place to get this data. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS In a study on Debt Recovery Tribunals, we sat in the DRTs for 24 cases, tracked their entire cycles and recorded the history of adjournments. Now that the DRT cases are online, it may be easier to text mine them and get more data. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS They also conducted household surveys. “We went and asked whether people were victims of a particular crime - this gives us a sense of the crime rate in the city, and whether people were happy with the police response." #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS Speaking from an academic’s perspective, @renukasane really wants the government, police etc to use this data. The challenge is to navigate the time before they become defensive. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS "We don’t have the pressures that media organisations have. What we have are funding pressures that require us to complete surveys on time. We even have the flexibility to not put it out at all." #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS Short discussion on the ethics of when and how the results of data collection exercises must be made public - ”Has it been done with public money or donor money?” @renukasane, “To some extent I don’t care. I see my job as just putting it out there.” #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS Renuka showed us research indicating different courts take different times to process cases. Here you see the probability of a case still being heard at a different court after x amount of time has passed. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS Also important to remember that the type of case will impact the time it takes to resolve. A court that has a lot of complex cases would naturally have an average time to resolution, as opposed to one that has straightforward ones. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS .@sh_devulapalli sums up the basic demand researchers and journalists have, "all we want is data to be free, open access, and neatly organised. We are dependent on institutes." #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS Going around the room now to see how journalists, lawyers, and people working in the policy space can collaborate to tell meaningful stories on data. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS Where can pressure be placed to solve the dissonance in the process of digitisation? #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS Almost uniform is the concern about how data is collected, and its veracity. Additionally, there’s a misunderstanding or even cluelessness on the part of keepers of data on how useful the results of studying this data can be. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS We need a simple story on why the court records and information have stopped coming out since 2018. This is extremely important. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS We need a consensus on what standards data should follow. For that, stakeholders need to come together. But should this be an institutional (or policy) effort or independent? #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS Data collection on law and justice needs to go more local. Nationwide NCRB data is not useful to have a meaningful conversation. Working more on the district or state level is important. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS .@renukasane glibly suggests that someone should perhaps make a video on how there is no data, and why it’s suspect that no data seems to exist on certain matters. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

@AgamiHub @sh_devulapalli @renukasane @VakashaS Renuka plugs the leapblog (blog.theleapjournal.org), which is where she and her colleagues have posted the results of their research and encourages people to make use of it for their stories. #Data4Justice #FridaysAtPROTO

And it's a wrap! #FridaysAtPROTO

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