Guest article, written by Ian Billsborough, Data Insights Lead, Salesforce Tableau
Salesforce is excited to be attending the Modernising Criminal Justice Conference on 9th June at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London. It's one of the most important convergences of UK justice sector colleagues and public sector suppliers.
As a data insights lead at Salesforce Tableau, here is the perspective I will be bringing to MCJ:The criminal justice system is facing a perfect storm. Demand is rising. The risk is scaling. Pressure on every part of the system across policing through to courts, prosecution, probation and prisons is at a level we haven't seen before.
This pressure and risk is recorded as data in our systems and processes. As this pressure grows, so does the challenge of drawing actionable insights from this data to enable us to better manage operational pressures and emerging risks. The challenge isn't a lack of data. If anything, it's the opposite. Criminal justice organisations are richer in data than ever. The problem is that the insights that could drive better decisions, the signals that surface risk before it escalates, the patterns that reveal demand before it overwhelms, are buried. Hidden in disconnected data silos, inaccessible to the people who need them most.
So there is a question we keep coming back to: how do we build a connected justice system? One where data is not only joined up, but trusted and then activated to manage operational demand and risk in real time.
At Salesforce, we think the answer comes in three parts.
Connect the fragmented data that exists across the justice system, breaking down the silos that hide risk and demand. Trust it, building the governed, assured and AI-ready foundations that decisions can be made with confidence. Activate it, turning that foundation into real-time insights that reach the right people, at the right time, in the flow of their work.
You can't get insights from data you can't reach. Across the justice system, the data landscape is fragmented by design across different agencies, different systems, and different standards. The connectivity we need can typically be addressed in two ways: strategically, as a cross-system ambition to build system-level data foundations, or operationally, against a specific operational use case, data sources and outcomes.
The Salesforce Victim Journey is a clear example of both. Across 12 police forces and growing, we have built a capability that supports victims across their 'victim journey' from first report through to case resolution. By connecting records management systems, communications channels and engagement data, forces can generate a single view of a victim, improving visibility, engagement and support throughout the victim journey. Through MuleSoft and Data360, this information is brought together to create a more connected experience for both victims and practitioners.Strategically, we are now progressing this to look at how the single view of a victim can support insights that inform policy and resourcing decisions through insights into the victim journey and how the Victims' Code of Practice is being implemented. Operational and strategic insights, built on a foundation of connected and trusted data.
Some forces are taking this further with Agent Bobbi, a police Agentic AI assistant. What began as an efficiency and engagement tool has become an operational support channel for some of the most vulnerable people. Underneath that there is a connected data foundation, applied to a specific outcome.
Connected data is only valuable if it can be trusted. This is where the conversation gets more nuanced, and increasingly more important as AI and agentic capabilities are developed.
For AI tools, trusted data isn't just nice to have. It's the foundation for everything. AI capabilities are only as good as the data they reason over. If that data is incomplete, inconsistently defined, or poorly governed, the outputs such as risk scores, demand forecasts, and automated decisions will be wrong. In a criminal justice context, wrong is not acceptable.
Information assurance requirements for sensitive criminal justice data such as victim records, offender profiles, and case files must be robustly met. Any AI system processing that data needs to demonstrate where data goes, how it is used, and what controls are in place. At Salesforce, that assurance is provided by the Einstein Trust Layer. It enforces zero data retention with all third-party LLM providers, meaning sensitive data is never stored after a query is processed and is never used to train external models. PII is automatically masked before it ever reaches a model. All AI interactions are logged to a full audit trail, and all of this runs on Hyperforce, with UK data residency, ensuring that sensitive data never leaves UK data centres.
This is how we build data foundations we can trust. With Informatica now within the Salesforce team we have data quality, master data management, and entity resolution and a governance framework that ensures AI decisions can be traced, challenged, and trusted.
Once you have a connected, trusted data foundation what can you actually do to activate it?
The shift we're seeing is from retrospective reporting to real-time, data-informed decision-making. Enabled by a shift from static reporting to agentic analytics. Not dashboards that tell you what happened last month, AI-driven analysis that surfaces risk and demand in real time, proactively, in the flow of work. At the strategic level, that means leadership teams being alerted to emerging resource pressures before they become a crisis. At the operational level, it means a case manager understanding which cases are at risk of breaching statutory time limits without needing to write a report or call a data team.
→ You can see the demo of this in action here.
Tableau Next, our agentic analytics capability, provides exactly this. Natural language queries, proactive Pulse alerting, and insights embedded directly into the tools people already use in their workflow.
The criminal justice system deserves and needs to be data-driven. The people working within it need insights that help them make better decisions.
Connect the data. Trust the data. Activate it. That is how we build a justice system that is genuinely fit for the challenges ahead.
The future of justice won't be built on more data. It will be built on better access to the right insights at the right time.
If you're attending the Modernising Criminal Justice Conference on 9th June, visit Salesforce at Stand #1 to see how connected data, trusted AI and agentic analytics are helping justice organisations turn that vision into reality. We'll be demonstrating how organisations are transforming fragmented information into actionable insights that support better decisions, stronger outcomes and more efficient services across the justice system.