Julie Ciccolini is NACDL's Director of Law Enforcement Accountability. She recruits, trains and supports public defenders across the nation with implementing and managing databases to track law enforcement misconduct. She also works at a local and national level to change police secrecy laws and promote greater police accountability.
In her previous role at The Legal Aid Society, Julie developed the law enforcement accountability application that NACDL now implements in other offices. Working with publicly available data, as well as with non-public information generated by the attorneys, Julie built a model that has revolutionized practice and helped promote a movement to reform police secrecy.
Julie was integral to launching The Legal Aid Society’s Cop Accountability Project. She designed and managed their Cop Accountability Project database which tracks police misconduct and identifies patterns of police abuse within the NYPD. She expanded the database to accommodate use by twelve defense and civil rights organizations across New York City and also initiated a public version of the database, available at https://capstat.nyc. Additionally, Julie worked with The Society’s Special Litigation Unit to conduct strategic research endeavors, data analysis projects, and advocacy campaigns in support of various criminal justice reform efforts. For example, her research and analyses helped repeal the unconstitutionally vague gravity knife law in New York and expose racial bias in crime prediction tools, like predictive policing and risk assessment instruments.
Most recently, Julie was a Research Technologist in the Digital Investigations Lab at Human Rights Watch. Using a range of technical skills, she supported remote and digital investigations into human rights abuses across the globe. Julie also conducted her own research on human rights issues, including an investigation into the failures of police accountability systems in New York City. Julie holds a B.S. from New York University and a M.A. in Human Rights from Columbia University.
