Wayne County Jail creates dashboard in effort to be transparent, learn more about inmates

DETROIT (FOX 2) - In an effort to be more transparent about how full the jail is, the Wayne County Sheriff's Department has created a real-time interactive dashboard to provide an inside look at who is in the jail.

The dashboard was created after six years and started as a study of the jail's population makeup by Hudson-Webber Foundation, which aims to improve the quality of life for people in Detroit.

Sheriff Raphael Washington said this will help the department be more transparent.

"The jail dashboard has and will increase visibility into operations," Washington said. "This gives us the daily population of inmates in the jail."

When using the dashboard, you can see how long inmates have been incarcerated, a breakdown of demographics, and a key feature - how mental health plays into incarcerations.

Chief of Jails Robert Dunlap said this is critical as jails like this one are used more and more to house mentally ill inmates because there are so few places for them to go.

"You've probably heard over and over that the Wayne County Jail again that it's the largest in custody mental health institute in the state because we dedicate 120 beds," Dunlap said. "Jail is not a place for people who are acutely mentally ill. That is something that a lot of individuals that are here they are waiting for beds at the state forensic center."

Having real-time information at the public’s fingertips can better under the significance of our country’s mental health crisis, according to Melanca Clark at the Hudson-Webber Foundation.

"We need the  data out there for judges, academics, and advocates to have access to the information," Clark said.

Washington said it will also help the jail understands it own operation as they transition into the new county jail, once it's built.

"It is, and will be, a key instrument in data driven decision making," he said.

Eventually, the information on the dashboard will reflect statistics at the new Wayne County Jail, which was originally supposed to be done by the fall of 2022. Due to COVID and other delays, the project is now expected to be complete by the spring of 2023.