In a pivotal move to address racial bias in California’s criminal legal system, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2778 which mandates the implementation of “race-blind” charging practices by prosecuting agencies starting January 1, 2025. The new requirement involves redacting any information identifying the race of individuals involved in a criminal case.
This law requires that the Department of Justice establish and enforce a system where all agency and agency-branch prosecutors implement a process for an initial case review for potential charging. Be it misdemeanors or felonies, all cases will have their information reviewed and any identifying information related to the race of the suspect, victim, or witness must be removed or redacted.
Recognizing the potential impact of unconscious bias in charging decisions, AB 2778 underscores the need for systematic changes to the legal process to ensure a fair and equitable experience for all. This started when California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued ‘race-blind’ charging guidelines, which became the framework for other agencies to implement the changes outlined in the legislation.
The overarching goal is to mitigate unconscious bias and acknowledge the issues within the criminal justice system. All of this with an eye towards improving fairness in charging decisions.
This follows in the footsteps of a similar bill—California Assembly Bill 1466, a 2022 bill mandating the redaction of ‘unlawfully restrictive covenants’ in property records. Both bills aim to mitigate the racial bias in many of our established government systems.
Paving the Way for Accountability and Equality
The need to address race bias in prosecution is due to the inequity seen with prosecuting decisions that consistently result in longer and harsher punishment for minorities. A New York based study showed that non-white defendants face higher pretrial detention rates and were more likely to receive prison sentence offers during plea bargaining compared to white defendants with similar charges. With thousands of state and federal prosecutors handling millions of felony and misdemeanor cases annually, even a slight reduction in bias could have a substantial positive effect on the criminal justice system and public spending.
Considerations When Sourcing Solutions – Manual Vs. Automated
With these new rules comes challenges for implementation. Documents subject to these new rules vary wildly, and not just between document types (forms vs full-page handwritten text). They vary between counties and established protocols. Additionally, the changes of the actual documents are fluid, frequent, and rarely documented themselves.
Standard manual evaluation for government agencies will be difficult due to the sheer volume of documents handled. Manual evaluation can take longer to process, thus increasing the chances of delays. The expectation of speed is assumed when due process must be timely.
Combined with the document volumes, the ability to scale will be a formidable obstacle. Depending on the difficulty of the documents in question, extensive and costly training might be needed.
Another error type to consider is inconsistency in interpretation. Standardized processes can be difficult to implement. This can be exacerbated by the ebb and flow of workload demands or employee turnover.
A natural next step might be to consider basic data capture tools for basic automation. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software can convert scanned or photographed documents into editable and searchable text. They recognize and extract characters from images, allowing for basic digitization of documents.
These solutions will struggle with complex documents. Legal documents often come in diverse formats and utilize complex verbiage which poses a challenge for traditional optical character recognition (OCR) systems. When interpreting and extracting information, basic OCR tools will struggle with complex linguistics as expected in legal documents.
Solutions for Full Compliance
When sourcing solutions to comply with complicated laws, agencies should demand precise and detailed changes to documents. It is imperative to choose a solution that efficiently executes the required tasks without generating false positives or missed redactions, thus preventing the creation of additional work.
A final consideration for the selection solution for AB2778 is evaluating semantic analysis requirements. Simply put, understanding the meaning behind words. Going beyond surface-level comprehension to advanced contextual analysis brings your solution closer to human-like interpretation of the task at hand. OCR, being character-centric, falls short in providing this semantic depth.
If the solution needs to tackle these complex considerations consider NLP technology. Natural Language Processing (NLP) enables software to understand and interpret complex text. NLP is a common offering as it has found its way into a variety of solutions for text understanding, sentiment analysis, language translation, speech recognition, and chatbots. For document processing it can help with information retrieval, text generation, classification, and redaction. Want to learn more about NLP?
NLP will be needed to to meet the review requirements. Summarized by Legiscan, “the bill would require a second, complete review of the case using unredacted reports and available evidence to consider the applicable individual charges and enhancements to charge in a criminal complaint…” and to achieve this level of compliance, one must consider an intelligent document processing software option.
The Role of Integration Partners
Organizations may recognize the importance of maturing their information governance practices to truly streamline processes, but find the task daunting. If that’s the case, we recommend engaging with experienced partners who have demonstrated success in handling similar projects for government agencies.
Our Government Contract Partners
Western Integrated Solutions
Western Integrated Systems stands as a seasoned partner, offering tailored solutions to navigate the complexities of information governance, drive successful digital transformations, and integrate advanced technologies like NLP for legislative compliance. We partner with Western Integrated Systems as they specialize in constructing mature and adaptable information governance programs aligned with business goals and compliance obligations.
Western Integrated has worked with countless counties and municipalities across California to implement FormXtra.AI solutions for data capture and document redactions. Their ability to handle complex procurement requirements common in government contracts means they are proven choice for state and local branches.
A robust document management system must be executed properly and Western Integrated Systems can design a document capture systems from the ground up. Their goal is to streamline processes while adhering to designated workflow structures and security protocols. They implement our solution, FormXtra.AI, as the foundational solution for many of projects.
Additionally, they’ve implemented signature verification for vote-by-mail and petition validation. Our SignatureXpert.AI SDK is the solution for county elections teams. Automating signature verification reduces workload for their limited staff.
Carahsoft
Carahsoft is a government IT solutions provider that facilitates the procurement process for technology products and services, serving as a trusted intermediary between technology vendors and various government agencies, offering a wide range of solutions and support services.
Carahsoft is The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®, supporting public sector organizations across Federal, State and Local Government agencies and Education and Healthcare markets. As the Master Government Aggregator® for vendor partners, they deliver solutions for Cybersecurity, MultiCloud, DevSecOps, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Open Source, Customer Experience and Engagement, and more. Working with resellers, systems integrators, and consultants, their teams provide industry leading IT products, services, and training through hundreds of contracts.