This document provides comprehensive documentation for the development of the Racial Justice Act (RJA) Research Index (referred to as “Index”). The Index is one of two research- and data-based tools products in the RJA Toolkit, which was developed by the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) to assist the Contra Costa Public Defender’s Association (CCPD) in filing and litigating RJA cases.
As of June 5, 2024, the RJA Index consists of 85 selected sources spanning the following searchable categories: the Racial Justice Act and related case law, implicit bias and racial profiling, discriminatory language, racial bias in the criminal legal system, frameworks on race and racism, pretextual stops, traffic stops, juror bias, policing bias, prosecutor bias, judge bias, deadly force, and drugs and controlled substances. 35 sources are published in law review journals, 38 sources are published in academic journals, 11 sources are court cases, and 1 source is a report published by a legal clinic.
The Index database is found below:
Racial Justice Act: Research Index
Please note the Filter, Sort, Search, and Edit Layout options in the top right corner.
A link to an Excel version can be found here (TBD).
The Index was conceived through ideation conversations with CCPD, and initial parameters were summarized as part of the RJA Toolkit proposal.
A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) protocol was developed for the Index as a means of standardizing and documenting the research process. The SLR began with a formalized research question:
| Full review question
| Provide the full review question in sentence format, and then break up the question according to the PICO framework (or other frameworks as appropriate). | How can the CPE team(P) provide the CCPD (C) an index (S) of readily accessible information on subjects related to the Racial Justice Act (E) so they have easy access to up-to-date information (I) for use in their cases (L)? |
|---|---|
| Expectation | To provide readily accessible information on subjects related to the Racial Justice Act |
| Client Group | The Contra Costa Public Defenders’ Office (CCPD) |
| Location | Cases related to the Racial Justice Act |
| Impact | CCPD attorneys have easy access to research via an updatable framework with relevant information. |
| Professionals | CPE Team |
| Service | Providing an index of articles and case summaries specifically citing subject areas commonly used in RJA litigation (e.g., information on racial profiling, theories on racism, pretextual stops, racial disparities, and implicit bias that provides quantitative, qualitative, or legal insight). |
To conduct the research process, the team input specific search terms in Google Scholar, WestLaw, and the American Sociological Review (ASR), applied appropriate filters where relevant, limited their review to the first 100 results per search sorted by relevance, and documented the search strategies. In total, the team reviewed, in part or in full, 1200 potential sources.
All sources that were included in the Index met the following eligibility criteria:
| Element | Inclusion Criteria |
|---|---|
| Expectation | |
| (information) | • For ASR sourced documents: |
◦ **Article published in ASR.**
• For Google Scholar sourced documents: ◦ Document is a peer-reviewed journal article. ◦ Document was published between 2002 and 2024. ◦ Document has at least 50 citations. • For second-order sources: ◦ Cited 3 amount of times within original article/document. ◦ Specifically mentions subject area by name (e.g. “implicit bias”) ◦ Citation is most up-to-date version • For EBSCO/Westlaw sourced documents: ◦ Document has subject area(s) or RJA as keywords. ◦ If document does not have keywords: ▪ Document references subject area in title or abstract OR ▪ Document references RJA in title or abstract. | | Client Group | • Information extracted is relevant to the CCPD’s work • Information extracted is either novel or supportive of other findings. | | Impact | • Document provides either quantitative, qualitative, or legal insight. ◦ e.g. Document provides statistical overviews. ◦ e.g. Document provides experiential testimony. ◦ e.g. Document summarizes relevant cases. | | Professionals | • Document is unique and collected by a member of the CPE Contra Costa Team. | | Service | • Document information is indexable. | | Language | • Document is published in English. |
QA reviewers were asked to recreate the document search process for each topic, including the inclusion and exclusion criteria and mechanism for independent quality assessment and confirm whether the search result likely resulted in adequately relevant documents, while acknowledging that academic and legal databases are constantly evolving and that search results may shift in the order in which they appear.
After confirming the adequacy of each search process, this version of the Index was finalized.
While developing the research methodology, the team explored the possibility of using Consensus AI, an AI-driven academic search engine, and wrote a memo detailing its decision against its usage for the current phase of this project.