Finding Sustainable Data Sources to Track Evictions to Monitor Progress for Achieving SDG 16 in Baltimore, Maryland

Overview

During the consultative process to identify locally-relevant SDG indicators for Baltimore, it became clear that not only was there no consensus of which justice-related indicators were most relevant in Baltimore, but also few (if any) datasets existed to track potentially chosen indicators over time. In fact, the Vital Signs report itself was deficient in the presence of any justice related indicators for neighborhoods. To focus attention on this issue, BNIA-JFI convened Baltimore’s Justice Indicators Roundtable made up of members of the newly-reconstituted Maryland Access to Justice Commission, Public Justice Center, Baltimore Housing Roundtable, Community Law Center, and Associated Black Charities. The group brainstormed a list of more than 40 potential indicators (See Appendix A); a set of five were chosen that address the overarching theme of the “criminalization of poverty” as part of the Baltimore SDG localization report. Members of the Justice Indicators Roundtable have begun to work on obtaining the data to calculate the indicators, but the process for obtaining (and in some cases even creating) data will require long-term implementation and focus.

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Written by
Seema D. Iyer, PhD, Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance—Jacob France Institute, University of Baltimore