Pittsburgh, PA trends in marijuana citations and arrests

BBarr-PDAP commented 1 month ago

Someone has requested help on a data project:

Submission notes

After marijuana was decriminalized in Pittsburgh, PA, we are hearing reports that police now have a choice whether to give people a citation under Pittsburgh law or arrest under Allegheny County and PA State law. Are there demographic differences in who is being cited vs. arrested for marijuana possession? Has that changed over time, especially in the context of 2015 legislation to decriminalize marijuana?

Location

Pittsburgh Bureau of Police

Requirements

Marijuana citation and arrest records

How to help

Leave a comment if you'd like to help. Do you have ideas, questions, or need any more information to get started?

josh-chamberlain commented 3 weeks ago

Students performed some analysis last semester here: https://github.com/Police-Data-Accessibility-Project/caasi-help-desk/blob/main/mj-decriminalization/analysis/grief%20to%20action/05-marijuana_visualizations.ipynb

This is a great start with helpful analysis, but it's hard to call this request "complete" without a summary of the response.

How to progress this issue

setup:

[x] accept the write access invite to the caasi-help-desk repository
[x] download and use GitHub Desktop to clone the caasi-help-desk repository (instructions)
[x] use github desktop to make a new branch called something like "mj-summary"
- this is so that any changes you make are not made to "main" and you can safely experiment
[x] publish the branch to GitHub
- this is a checkpoint to make sure the previous steps worked
[x] download Visual Studio Code and use it to open the repository folder you cloned
[x] open the mj-decriminalization folder in Visual Studio code

[x] review the original request in the folder's README
[ ] review the published results linked above in Visual Studio code; do the cells of the notebook run properly when you click play? if you make changes, are you able to change/break parts of the notebook by updating code blocks and re-running?
[ ] comment on this issue with a brief summary (a few sentences) of the existing notebook, whether all the pieces of analysis seem to be there to answer the question, and what additional calculations/charts might be helpful.
- github markdown help

closing the issue:

[ ] TBD, depending on what your analysis uncovers! You will definitely make changes to the README, and maybe add a revised notebook and generally clean up.

maxachis commented 1 week ago

review the published results linked above in Visual Studio code; do the cells of the notebook run properly when you click play? if you make changes, are you able to change/break parts of the notebook by updating code blocks and re-running?

After reviewing it myself, I can confirm there are a few missing puzzles pieces in the existing code. The main entry missing is the portion where they identify (from the WPRDC data they cite), the Marijuana-related arrests and citations, and combine that data together. Instead, that data is hosted in a Google account (which we can't access), and which the original coders then downloaded.

From a learning standpoint, I think it's more fruitful if we work with the raw data from WPRDC, and clearly define the steps taken to derive that data, so that others can better repeat the steps of Brian's analysis. At any rate, we can't access those CSVs in the Google drive unless we reach out to the original owner.

josh-chamberlain commented 1 week ago

@maxachis 100%. I believe they were derived from the original files and stored there for sharing, but I did not realize they were actually referencing google drive...my fault. We should just keep them in the repo!

BBarr-PDAP commented 6 days ago

Attached is the Google Doc that Max and I worked on last week. Thank you, again, Josh, for allowing me to assist on this Issue, and Max for helping me work through this data to analyze it!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iaFJsgaAQpzfMaVLSCI0mNoum6zJ1F7FTTxll5d5ZS0/edit

josh-chamberlain commented 6 days ago

@BBarr-PDAP looks like the google doc is private. Unless it's more than a page or two, would you mind just commenting it here?

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