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In April, Hancock County became the first county in the state to publish a dashboard reflecting data on how the Hancock County Prosecutor’s Office handles criminal felony and misdemeanor cases.
The Hancock County Prosecutor Dashboard is an interactive tool that gives the public access to 10 years’ worth of information depicting how resources are distributed and used by the prosecutor’s office in which areas the office could improve its operations.
The dashboard’s development was led by Prosecuting Attorney Brent Eaton who used Prosecutorial Performance Indicators, a suite of indicators used to help prosecutors measure efficiency and justice within their counties. The indicators are the result of a partnership among the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, Florida International University and Loyola University Chicago to develop dashboards in prosecutors’ office nationwide.
At the heart of the project is the prosecutor’s office’s work to provide Hancock County residents with a platform to find digestible, helpful information on how crimes are handled where they live, Eaton told The Indiana Lawyer.
“[People are] going to talk about the work that we do,” Eaton said. “If we want them to or not, that’s what is going to happen. And in the absence of a lot of clear, easily understandable information that’s credible, people are going to begin to try to rely upon their own personal experiences or anecdotes to create reasons why they see the things that they do.”
Establishing transparency
Eaton became the Hancock County prosecutor in 2015 and, within a few years, noticed a dichotomy between how the local justice system communicated singular cases and how it could be showing case trends.
The justice system is one of the largest expenses for local governments, Eaton said. And while case information is usually widely available for the residents who fund the system, individual cases don’t provide insight into larger trends across the system and, in turn, don’t necessarily reflect what’s really happening in the community.
Eaton’s main priority in developing Hancock County’s dashboard was to offer county residents a look at the work the prosecutor’s office does in service of the community.
While the dashboard doesn’t currently highlight funding distribution, it does include 10 years’ worth of data about what types of cases are prosecuted, for how long and what their outcomes were.
Graphics highlight how the case filing rate has changed since 2015, how often the office seeks diversion programs for defendants instead of jail time, and what type of sentencing defendants are given based on their charges.
The dashboard also includes a glossary page with explanations of “legalese” terms used to describe the data that aren’t in most residents’ everyday vocabulary, like “continuance” and “disposition.”
Eaton understands that residents will talk and base opinions on whatever information is at their disposal. By being upfront about the office’s work, he hopes to give residents a better chance to be well-informed.
“A singular event may attract a lot of media attention, and that may shape the way people perceive what’s happening in their community, rightfully or wrongfully,” he said. “And so, my hope, really, is that this is something that gives people a broad view of the system that they’re paying for.”
More counties join efforts
Soon, Hancock County won’t be the only prosecutor’s office in Indiana with its own data-driven dashboard: Monroe County aims to launch its own version this summer, led by prosecutor Erika Oliphant.
Oliphant has been working toward the release of the county’s prosecutor dashboard for about three years. In 2021, the county received funding from the Arnold Ventures Criminal Justice Initiative, which supports research and policy that works to reduce crime, according to its website.
The grant allotted about $603,000 to Indiana University Indianapolis for a three-year research project, of which Monroe County was listed as a partner alongside the Monroe County branch of the NAACP and Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter. Monroe County’s dashboard was developed alongside the research project, titled “Promoting Racial Justice and Transparency in Indiana,” which wrapped up in 2025.
One of Oliphant’s goals for the prosecutor’s dashboard is to specifically track and display racial and ethnic disparities in the county. Her interest builds off work started more than 30 years ago that was spearheaded by various volunteer groups, including the Monroe County NAACP.
The work, however, never received dedicated funding and resources. When Oliphant was elected to office in 2018, she adopted the research as a priority for her role. The dashboard will be updated frequently to support ongoing research into existing disparities, she said.
“The thing about ongoing data collection and ongoing data analysis is that we can tweak policy based on some of our recommendations we received through our research work and see if they’re making an impact on those racial and ethnic disparities in a way to reduce their impact,” she said.
Through the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, Oliphant has been able to connect with Eaton as they both developed their dashboards.
While the prosecutors are approaching the dashboards differently based on individual priorities and populations, the two share a common goal to improve transparency for their constituents.
“To a large extent, prosecutors’ offices have kind of been like a black box; people don’t really know what we’re doing or how it works,” Oliphant said. “For me, it’s important to just be as transparent as we can and try to share more information about what we’re doing, just so people have a better understanding of what we’re doing.”
Learning from data
While Eaton hopes the information is helpful for residents, he’s already seeing how the dashboard is changing the work his office is doing. The data shows him what’s working well in the prosecutor’s office and what could be improved, he said.
Over the past decade, Hancock County has increased in population, growing from 70,000 to about 90,000 from 2015 to 2025. While the number of case filings varied within the same time frame, the prosecutor’s office filed 1,770 cases in 2025, just 23 more cases than what was filed in 2015.
For Eaton, the numbers demonstrate how hard county law enforcement has worked to keep residents safe each year.
“On a per capita basis, Hancock County is safer than it was a decade [ago],” he said.
On the flipside, he acknowledges areas the county could improve, such as how long it takes to resolve cases from filing to disposition.
“I could see that, in certain ways, I think we need to find ways to maybe move cases through the system a little bit more efficiently,” he said.
The dashboard has only been public for a couple of weeks, but Eaton said he’s already looking at ways to bolster the data output to accommodate nuances in cases, such as when a defendant served time in jail before their case concluded.
He credits staff at the prosecutor’s office for their yearslong effort in maintaining accuracy and transparency to be able to put together a dashboard with data like this.•
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