Jackson County prosecutor’s office focuses on fighting crime, and the data proves it | Opinion
I announced last year that I would not seek reelection as Jackson County prosecutor, after serving more than 13 years in my current role, following 14 years as an assistant prosecutor. I leave office at the dawn of 2025. It’s been an honor to serve, and I am proud of the many improvements we’ve made in this office.
I have stood successfully for election three times after an appointment in 2011. I made clear from the beginning that one of my goals was to bring accountability to the office. And I wanted to make the data available to show that we are accountable and transparent.
My office has pursued justice for the residents of Jackson County, and others, by prosecuting and convicting more than 40,000 defendants of serious felonies since 2011. Many of these cases were heinous, awful crimes involving innocent victims who suffered devastating impacts.
I’ve also responded to community concerns to hold everyone, including diocesan bishops and police officers, to the highest standards of ethics and justice — because no one should be above the rule of law. When citizens raised concerns about police treatment of protesters following the death of George Floyd, my office created a portal for citizens to file complaints. We’re still receiving complaints. In 2020, a grand jury indicted a Kansas City police detective in a fatal shooting of a Black civilian. In November 2021, a judge convicted that officer, and in October 2023, the appeals court upheld that conviction with a scathing rebuke of the police conduct. Finally, my office recognizes mistakes and corrects old wrongs. In November 2022, our office aided in freeing Kevin Strickland from his wrongful conviction for crimes that occurred in 1978.
What’s become clear in this role is the importance of assembling, displaying and pointing our community to the data that our office generates. Too often, critics fall to the same knee-jerk attacks: The prosecutor lets criminals go free. Or the prosecution won’t file these type of cases (an especially common complaint regarding property crimes).
It’s long baffled me, because those complaints are not supported by the evidence. Critics make allegations of the office’s failure and don’t bother to study or even look at the data made available.
In 2018, I created a Crime Strategies Unit to produce this type of foundational information about our office’s work and our success. We’ve used it and the data produced by this process to improve prosecution and to build more public trust and transparency. We’ve also benefited from a diverse community board to guide us to the right questions to explore about our office.
As an example, in 2020 the office looked deeply at the drug cases prosecuted in Kansas City. We found stark racial disparities: Eighty-one percent of buy-bust cases involved a Black suspect, when the population in Kansas City was 39% Black. Too often, we also found these drug cases have no documented connection to violence. Possibly even more important, these cases seldom resulted in much of an outcome. Far, far too many of our office’s biggest share of cases — those against drug possessors and dealers — produced little result or benefit. Yet each carried a cost.
“Our outcomes (and yours) were not tied to public safety, were ineffective, were expensive and were racially imbalanced, therefore not fairly enforced on this community,” I told the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners.
Today, we’ve expanded our data work. In the coming months, the national nonprofit group Measures for Justice will produce a new dashboard of our data. We believe this will bring even greater clarity and drive home the importance of having an outsider validate our data work.
I am certain our office will continue these efforts to build and maintain trust with our community. I look forward to a day when Jackson County has great clarity that its prosecutor runs an accountable and transparent office. The data is right there to prove it.
Jean Peters Baker is Jackson County prosecutor.
