Flow My Tears, the Data Librarian Said: The Challenges and Frustrations of Working with Administrative Data

The New York Times recently published an article on how prisoners in the State of Louisiana often remain incarcerated well after their release dates (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/us/politics/louisiana-prison-overdetention.html). The article notes many contributing factors to this problem, including issues with the Criminal and Justice Unified Network system that the state uses to track offenders within the corrections system. In fact, this system was audited by the state, which found many issues with the management and accuracy of data in this system: https://app.lla.state.la.us/go.nsf/getSummary?OpenAgent&arlkey=40160023CWIN-AYMATY.

In this presentation, I will discuss my own experiences with data from this system, including issues with both the "tidyness" of the data and their accuracy and the challenges of working with them in the context of helping a student work with the data for his dissertation. The presentation will also be in part a case study of the challenges that accompany working with administrative data that are not necessarily collected with researchers in mind.