AMY BACH WAS researching her book about the US court system when she met a woman named Sharon in Quitman County, Mississippi. One July day in 2001, Sharon said, her boyfriend took her under a bridge and beat her senseless with a tire iron. Sharon passed out numerous times before her niece intervened and stopped the man from killing her. In photosfrom the emergency room after the attack, Sharon's brown, almond-shaped eyes are swollen shut. She reported the crime to the police, who wrote up an aggravated assault report.

And then nothing happened. Neither the police nor the local prosecutors pursued the case. As Bach's research later revealed, Quitman County hadn't prosecuted a domestic violence case in 21 years. When Bach brought her discovery to the prosecutor, she remembers him saying, "Has it been that long?"

Compelled by the experiences of Sharon and so many others collected in her 2009 Ordinary Injustice, Bach set off on a multi-year, labor-intensive effort to build a free, public tool that would make the many injustices in the court system a little bit tougher to ignore. Measures for Justice today with deep data dives on more than 300 county court systems in Washington, Utah, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida, with plans to expand to 20 states by 2020. It pulls together the data that has traditionally remained hidden in ancient databases and endless Excel spreadsheets.

Even with just six states included, the comprehensiveness of the platform surpasses anything similar that currently exists. Measures for Justice compiles granular data for 32 different metrics that indicate how equitable a given county's justice system might be. The portal shows, for instance, how many people within a county plead guilty without a lawyer present, how many non-violent misdemeanor offenders the courts sentence to jail time, and how many people are in jail because they failed to pay bail of less than $500. It offers insight into re-conviction rates and never-prosecuted cases. Users can compare counties or filter information based on how certain measures impact people of different races or income levels. And the site organizes all of it into easily digestible data visualizations.

To read more of Issie Lapowsky's article, please click here.

Visit Measures for Justice website here.