Justice Equity Need Index
It’s time for a bold investment to correct the history of over-policing and mass incarceration that has devastated Black and Brown communities for generations. Now is the moment to invest in a care-first approach to provide an equitable future for our communities of color.
About the Development of the Justice Equity Need Index
Developed by the members of the Justice Equity Alliance – Catalyst California, Community Coalition, LA Voice – and in partnership with organizations including the L.A. Community Action Network, Homeboy Industries, Communities in Schools, and Californians for Safety and Justice, the Justice Equity Need Index (JENI) sprang from a collective recognition that L.A. County lacked a rigorous, data-driven model to map out its stark geographies of system impacted communities. Without such a tool, aligning finite resources to best meet needs was a nearly impossible task. The JENI offers a means to map out the disparate burden that criminalization and a detention-first justice model place on specific communities. As race underlies many of the criminal justice system’s inequities, it is a crucial component in the JENI. This spatial impact information, in turn, identifies where prevention, diversion, and supportive reentry services—and, vitally, the funding to make it all possible—should be directed to make the most significant, most equitable impact.
What is Justice Equity
We define justice equity as the fair sharing of resources and opportunities with those most impacted by the systemic injustice of our criminal justice system. An incarceration-first approach characterized by a heavy reliance on local surveillance and criminalization has historically defined the justice system in Los Angeles County. This approach has directly led to the disproportionate rates of justice-system involvement among communities of color that have already experienced the costs of public disinvestment. Justice equity reveals the deeply disparate impact the justice system has had on communities; reimagines a just system built on community-driven prevention, healing, and health; and reinvests public resources based on that vision.
What is the Justice Equity Need Index
The JENI (Justice Equity Need Index) is a geographic, quantitative tool that estimates the locations of the Los Angeles County communities that bear the disproportionate burden of our outdated, broken criminal justice system. Working toward a vision of justice equity, the JENI identifies the areas in greatest need of public investments in community healing, health, and prevention to help reverse historical injustices. Informed by criminal justice literature and direct input from community-serving organizations, the JENI compiles and measures community need through a set of nine indicators that capture factors associated with detention-first policies:
The JENI 2022 includes updated JENI 2019 indicators and uses a new methodology to rank ZIP Codes by need aligned with the Justice Equity Services Index (JESI) methodology. The JENI 2022 breaks out the following indicators into three components to measure different contributing factors to justice equity need:
- System Involvement: The system-involved population by ZIP Code results in direct needs for justice equity, as measured by adult and youth probation.
- Indicators: Adult Probation (per 1,000 people); Youth Probation (per 1,000 people)
- Inequity Drivers: Root inequities across communities that contribute to racial and economic disparities as seen in incarceration and policing.
- Indicators: Black, Latinx, AIAN, and NHPI Percentages of Population (average percentile); Unemployment Rate (%); Population aged 25+ without a High School Diploma (%); Population below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level (%); Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 people)
- Criminalization Risk: Conditions where the criminal justice system has historically taken a detention-first, prevention-last approach.
- Indicators: Mental Health Hospitalizations (per 1,000 people); Substance Use-Related Hospitalizations (per 1,000 people); Homelessness Rate (per 1,000 people)
ZIP Codes with populations of less than 500 or missing at least half of the indicators within a component are excluded from the JENI to ensure data reliability.
Additional Changes to JENI 2022
- Percentile Methodology: We calculate the JENI 2022 based on the same percentile methodology used for JESI, rather than using z-scores as JENI 2019. First, we assign each ZIP Code a percentile (similar to ranking) for each indicator based on the indicator value for that ZIP Code. Then we average the indicator percentiles grouping them by component area; these averages are the component scores. The final JENI 2022 score is the average of the three component scores.
- Race Composite Indicator: For JENI 2022, we use a different method for including the percentage of people of color. In JENI 2019, we had the total percentage of the population that is Black, Latinx, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (NHPI), Other Race, or Two or More Races. For JENI 2022, we calculated a race composite score that treats the percentage of the population that is non-Latinx Black alone, Latinx, AIAN (alone or in combination with another race), or NHPI (alone or in combination with another race) as separate indicators that are then converted to percentiles and averaged into one composite percentile score. The race composite score helps ensure areas with high percentages of Black, AIAN, or NHPI residents are given equal weight as areas with high percentages of Latinx residents, as high Latinx areas have much higher percentages than high AIAN or NHPI areas. For example, a high AIAN area may have 8% AIAN residents, while a high Latinx area could have 90% Latinx residents. We also excluded Two or More Races and Other Race from the race composite indicator after additional analysis revealed that areas with high percentages of Two or More Races or Other Race are often not aligned with areas historically impacted by the criminal justice system in the county.
Why Does the JENI Matter
The JENI 2022 offers advocates and policymakers the means to identify the communities that bear the disproportionate burden of criminalization and disinvestment placed on people of color across Los Angeles County. More importantly, this tool should direct prevention, diversion, and supportive reentry services and resources to make the most significant, most equitable impact.
What Can You Do With the JENI
- Identify the highest need communities at a ZIP Code level and within the new supervisorial districts and service planning areas.
- View the Index through three main components, Inequity Drivers, Criminalization Risk, and System Involvement, and their respective indicators to evaluate drivers of need.
- Use the JENI downloadable data to examine further the areas in need of greater investment and community-based services.
JENI 2022
JENI Results
The map below shows each ZIP Code’s final score on the JENI from Lowest to Highest Need Level. Each ZIP Code’s final JENI score is based on averaging its three component scores and assigning a final percentile value from 0 to 100, with 100 being the overall highest need level. On the map, the ZIP Codes with the Highest Need Levels, or the top 80th to 100th percentile of need levels, are shown in red, and the ZIP Codes with the Lowest Need Levels, or the bottom 0 to the 19th percentile of need levels, in yellow.
Use the map to identify ZIP Codes in greater need of services to meet their communities’ needs. Click on a ZIP Code to learn more about each ZIP Code’s level of need through component scores and indicators. Toggle different layers on and off in the upper right corner of the map to see how ZIP Code Need Levels vary by Supervisorial District and Service Planning Area.
Copy and paste code to embed a map on your own website: <iframe width=”100%” height=”700″ src=”https://www.healthycity.org/pages/jeni-2022/Figure1_JENI_Map.html” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
To interact more with the data and download the complete set of JENI scores by ZIP Code, jump to our Methodology section.
JENI Component Results
Each of the JENI’s three components can be used to understand the distribution of justice-related needs in the county to ensure our Highest Need communities have the appropriate resources and services available. The System Involvement component is not shown on the website due to concerns about this information being used to stigmatize communities of color. To gain access to the System Involvement component map, please email Jacky Guerrero, JGuerrero@catalystcalifornia.org with your name, organization, and a description of how it will be used.
On each map, the ZIP Codes with the Highest Need Levels, or the top 80th to 100th percentile of need levels, are shown in darker colors, and the ZIP Codes with the Lowest Need Levels, or the 0 to the 19th percentile of need levels, in lighter colors.
Click between the tabs to see how service distribution varies by component in L.A. County and identify ZIP Codes in greater need of capacity building and support to meet their communities’ needs. Click on a ZIP Code to find out more about each ZIP Code’s level of demand and the drivers behind it. Toggle different layers on and off in the upper right corner of the map to see how ZIP Code Need Levels vary by Supervisorial District and Service Planning Area.
Copy and paste code to embed a map on your own website: <iframe width=”100%” height=”748″ src=”https://www.healthycity.org/pages/jeni-2022/Figure2_JENI_Components_Map.html” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
To interact more with the data and download the complete set of JENI and Component scores by ZIP Code, jump to our Methodology section.
Key Findings and Conclusion
Looking at the JENI map, one can visualize the unequal impact driven by the way L.A. County administers justice. Beneath the overarching trends, each highly impacted ZIP Code tells its own unique story of how the intersection of socioeconomic needs and sanctioned criminalization fuels the local justice burden. This map also illustrates the strong correlation between communities with a disproportionate justice system burden and a critical shortage of social and health infrastructure such as hospitals, early care, education, and child protection supports. Once again, the intimate geographic relationship between disinvestment and punitive justice is quite clear.
Key Findings
- In Los Angeles County, South LA has a very high concentration of ZIP Codes with a need for justice-related services. Populations in the Antelope Valley, Downtown, East Los Angeles, and the San Fernando Valley also have concentrations of Highest or High JENI Need ZIP Codes. About half (48.7%) of the county population lives in a ZIP Code with Highest or High JENI Need levels.
- The data does not show a strong negative or positive relationship between the JENI and JESI (Justice Equity Services Index). Twenty-four of the Highest/High JENI Need ZIP Codes have the Lowest JESI Service Level, while 22 of the Lowest JENI Need ZIP Codes have the Highest/High JESI Service level. This indicates a potential mismatch between services and needs in those specific communities.
Ultimately, the JENI should be used to intentionally drive county investments to the High and Highest Need communities in a way that will demonstrably add capacity and meaningfully improve residents’ lives. A data-driven needs assessment is not enough on its own. County leaders must engage communities in heavily impacted areas—particularly those who have felt that impact via direct involvement with the criminal justice system—to understand what their needs are and how they can best be addressed.
JENI 2022 Data Table
Download the JENI
The table below includes each ZIP Code’s overall ranking, percentile score, and need level on the JENI and the JENI’s three components, along with all indicators.
Use the search bar to find a particular ZIP Code, the up and down arrows to sort the table, and the boxes underneath each column header to filter the data. Or, click on your preferred file format to download the whole data table. Depending on your device, you may need to scroll left and right to view all columns.
Copy and paste code to embed a map on your own website: <iframe width=”100%” height=”968.141″ src=”https://www.healthycity.org/pages/jeni-2022/Figure3_JENI_Table.html” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
Methodology
The Justice Equity Need Index (JENI) uses data from various sources to estimate the factors that drive disparities in criminalization and policing. Overall, the JENI includes ten indicators split across three components to help measure a community’s risk for being disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system and current levels of need. Indicators are based on our research of factors that drive risk and disparities in criminalization and engagement with community-based partners. Our components and indicators are:
- System Involvement: Adult Probation Rate (per 1,000 people); Youth Probation Rate (per 1000 people youth ages 10-21)
- Inequity Drivers: Black, Latinx, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native Percentages of Population (average percentile); Unemployment Rate (%); Adult Population without a High School Degree (%); Persons Living Below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level (%); Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000 people)
- Criminalization Risk: Mental Health Hospitalizations (per 1,000 people); Alcohol and Drug-Related Hospitalizations (per 1,000 people); Homelessness Rate (per 1,000 people)
The JENI includes an overall JENI rank and percentile for each ZIP Code in the county based on the average of three component scores. Percentiles range from 0 to 100, with 100 indicating the greatest need. Ranks range from 1 to 277, with 1 indicating the ZIP Code with the highest need. We also split ZIP Codes into four different need levels based on their percentile scores. For example, ZIP Codes with percentile values at or above the 80th percentile have the highest need, and those with values between the 60th and 80th percentile have high need. ZIP Codes with populations of less than 500 people or with data for fewer than half of the indicators in a component are excluded from the JENI to help control for data reliability.
ZIP Code Boundaries
We rely on ZIP Code boundaries published by the Los Angeles County Internal Services Department and the City of Los Angeles’ Geohub. While the U.S. Census Bureau publishes population data for ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs), which are often used as a proxy for ZIP Codes, these do not always align with United States Postal Service (USPS) ZIP Codes. Because many of our indicators come from residential ZIP Codes, including probation and hospitalization data, we use these L.A. County ZIP Code boundaries instead of ZCTAs for the JENI.
Calculating the JENI
We first calculate a value for each indicator at the ZIP Code level. For indicators at the census tract level, including data from the American Community Survey and homelessness data, we aggregate census tract estimates up to the ZIP Code level using data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
HUD provides USPS ZIP Code crosswalk files that account for residential and business address patterns across census tracts, ZIP Codes, and counties. Using these files, we allocate the share of addresses in each census tract to their intersecting USPS ZIP Codes. We calculate indicator and population estimates by multiplying each census tract’s population by the share of its residential addresses in each ZIP Code. We exclude PO Boxes, other than PO Boxes servicing Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands. For indicators at the ZIP Code level, we match ZIP Codes to ZIP Codes from the Los Angeles County Internal Services Department and calculate rates based on our population estimates.
After calculating indicator estimates, we calculate percentile scores for each indicator, ranging from 0 to 100, with 100 representing the highest rates and percentiles. ZIP Codes with population denominators below 500 for an indicator do not receive percentile scores for that particular indicator to control for data reliability. For the youth probation rate indicator, we use a threshold of 100 youth ages 10-21 in the ZIP Code to account for the smaller total population in this age group.
Our race indicator is calculated by averaging the percentiles for the percentage of the population that is Black alone (non-Latinx), Latinx (of any race), American Indian or Alaska Native (alone or in combination with another race), or Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (alone or in combination with another race). In other words, we first calculate the percentage of the population each racial group represents, then calculate the percentiles of those values.
The component scores are the average of the indicator percentiles within each component. In other words, the System Involvement component represents the average of the adult probation and youth probation percentiles in a given ZIP Code. To ensure a single indicator does not drive the component score for a particular ZIP Code, ZIP Codes with fewer than half of all indicators in a component do not receive a component score.
The final JENI is based on the average of the component percentiles. ZIP Codes in the 100th percentile or 1st rank have the highest need. Each ZIP Code also receives a need level for the JENI and each component: Highest, High, Moderate, Low, Lowest. Each need level represents about 20 percent of ZIP Codes in the county, with the Highest Need Level indicating ZIP Codes within the top 80th-100th percentile of need.
Indicators and Data Sources
Adult Probation
Measure: Average adult probation rate per 1,000 people
Source: Los Angeles County Probation Department, Adult Administrative Services, 2016-2020.
Youth Probation
Measure: Average youth probation rate per youth ages 10-21
Source: Los Angeles County Probation Department, Juvenile Field Administration, 2016-2020.
Black, Latinx, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander Population
Measure: Composite of the percent of the population that is Black alone (non-Latinx), Latinx (of any race), American Indian or Alaska Native (alone or in combination with another race, includes Latinx), Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (alone or in combination with another race, includes Latinx)
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2015-2019 American Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates. Retrieved from https://data.census.gov/cedsci/.
Unemployment
Measure: Unemployment rate for the civilian labor force
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2015-2019 American Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates. Retrieved from https://data.census.gov/cedsci/.
Adult Population without a High School Degree
Measure: Percent of population ages 25 and over without a high school degree or equivalent
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2015-2019 American Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates. Retrieved from https://data.census.gov/cedsci/.
Persons Living Below 200% of Federal Poverty Level
Measure: Percent of persons living in households earning below 200% of Federal Poverty Level
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2015-2019 American Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates. Retrieved from https://data.census.gov/cedsci/.
Mental Health Hospitalizations
Measure: Average mental health hospitalization rate per 1,000 people
Source: CA Office of State Health Planning and Development, 2017-19.
Substance Use-Related Hospitalizations
Measure: Average alcohol and drug-related hospitalization rate per 1,000 people
Source: CA Office of State Health Planning and Development, 2017-19.
Violent Crime
Measure: Violent crime rate per 1,000 people. Violent crimes include assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault, attempted robbery, sexual assault, and homicide.
Sources: CA Department of Justice, Crimes, and Clearances, 2020. Retrieved from https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/data.
LA County Sheriff’s Department, Historical Crime Data, 2020. Retrieved from https://lasd.org/transparency/part1and2crimedata/.
LA Police Department, 2020. Retrieved from https://data.lacity.org/Public-Safety/Crime-Data-from-2020-to-Present/2nrs-mtv8.
Homelessness
Measure: Homelessness sheltered and unsheltered rate per 1,000 people
Sources: Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, 2020.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Point-in-Time Estimates by Continuum of Care, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahar/2020-ahar-part-1-pit-estimates-of-homelessness-in-the-us.html.
Total Population
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, 2015-19, American Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates. Retrieved from https://data.census.gov/cedsci/.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Q4 2020, USPS ZIP Code Crosswalk Files. Retrieved from https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/usps_crosswalk.html.
ZIP Code Boundaries
Source: Los Angeles County Internal Services Department, October 2020, L.A. County ZIP Code. Retrieved from https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/lacounty::la-county-zip-code.
Neighborhood Definitions:
Source: Los Angeles Times, 2010, L.A. County Neighborhoods. Retrieved from https://boundaries.latimes.com/sets/.
Supervisorial District Boundaries
Source: Los Angeles County Redistricting Commission, 2021, Supervisorial Districts. Retrieved from https://redistricting.lacounty.gov/final_map_and_submissions/.
Service Planning Area Boundaries
Source: Los Angeles County Internal Services Department, 2011, L.A. County Service Planning Areas. Retrieved from https://egis-lacounty.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/la-county-service-planning-area.
Limitations
The JENI tool is designed to approximate the need for justice equity and persistence of disparities in our criminal justice system across ZIP Codes in Los Angeles County. ZIP Codes are estimated boundaries that change over time and do not necessarily represent community definitions of neighborhoods. The data in the JENI are the best available indicators at sub-county geographic levels that allow us to measure driving factors but do not necessarily capture the full scope of justice equity need or disparities. One limitation in the data is the lack of disaggregated data for other racial subgroups that have been disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system, including some subgroups of Asian descent. We recognize the need for better data in the justice system and other sources to capture the diversity of this community. The JENI should be combined with community knowledge and expertise to understand disparities and types of investments needed in our highest and high need communities.
Be Sure to Check Out the Complementary Justice Equity Services Index
The Justice Equity Services Index (JESI) highlights L.A. County’s justice-related, community-based supports and services, identifying Low to Highest Service areas to inform where to shift investments and capacity-building supports towards equity and justice.
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