This Post Marks a Rebirth for D.C. Witness

By Amos Gelb - June 7, 2021
Featured | Op-Eds |

For the past six years we have worked to bring unprecedented transparency to the D.C. criminal justice system through a new model of criminal justice reporting. We have covered every homicide from act to resolution and gathered, verified and enhanced public data and told every story. 

We have truly appreciated your support but were always plagued by “if only.” For us, “if only” meant if only D.C. Witness users could see the depth of our data. If only our website was not so clunky, if only we could bring even more clarity to the work we do and serve our audience to the extent we believe we are able. 

Thanks to the incredibly generous support of the Google News Initiative and the Knight Foundation, this post signals the launch of our new website, the new database behind it and the evolution of our model for criminal justice transparency. Working with the incredible team at MindShift, we have taken all our ideas and will now bring them to you.

Our new site has

1. A totally redesigned interface – so you can more easily see the different reporting we do.
2. A better map with more data and information
3. A timeline so you can track the course of individual data
4. A data playground where you can dive deeper into our more than 200,000 data points
5. A new mobile site that is more navigable. 

Over the next few months we will be fine tuning these features and adding more, like push notifications for new information on specific cases. Please let us know what you like and don’t about the new features so we can continue to improve. 

As local and federal governments scramble to respond to the cries for criminal justice reform, they conveniently leave out the most important part – how are they going to be accountable? We have always believed accountability comes through transparency and you can’t fix what you can’t count. 

We are here to do the counting, so you have the information to call to account our elected officials and civic agencies.

Cheers
Amos Gelb
Publisher