People who live in Fairfax County, Virginia, have a new way to track crime trends in their neighborhoods.
County prosecutors officially made an online data dashboard public this week.
The database shows that, stretching back to the start of 2023, the county has handled more than 18,000 criminal cases.
Out of those, 59% were misdemeanors and 41% were felonies. Violent crimes made up 24% of cases, while 76% of them were nonviolent crimes. Violent felonies accounted for about 8% of all cases.
“Releasing this to the public is part of our commitment to transparency,” said Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano. “We also use this data internally, because it allows us to really figure out how to best direct our resources.”
The four most common case types — felony narcotics, followed by misdemeanor assault, larceny and driving while intoxicated — made up nearly half of all cases.
“We can break down the data and see what types of cases that we have,” Descano told WTOP. “We’re going to be able to take that information and be proactive when it comes to building community safety instead of just reactive.”
Descano said the figures related to felony narcotics were particularly interesting to him, as that category was the most common case type of all — making up 13% of all cases.
“Now we’re really going to start to take a look at how we can go a little bit wider and do new things because we can see that we have a need in this community for drug interdiction,” he said. “A lot of these drug cases are cases that don’t involve violence, which means that a lot of them are individual users who may be in the throes of addiction that we can help.”
Descano said the dashboard would likely be updated every three to six months.
“We’re going to be using this data to really make our office and our system much more efficient,” he said.
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