Better tracking of migrant detention worldwide
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- understand define deliver sustain
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Overhauling how the Global Detention Project collects, traces, and presents the world's largest dataset on migrant detention — a redesigned database management system for the team and a public data explorer for everyone else.
The Global Detention Project holds the world's largest repository of data on migrant detention (detention centres, governance, legislation) and uses it to monitor practices and advocate against arbitrary and harmful detention. Their dataset is irreplaceable, but the system holding it together wasn't keeping up. The GDP team needed finer-grained, claims-based tracking, and the public needed access patterns the existing site couldn't support.
We're working with GDP, in partnership with Dot Studio, on a two-part overhaul. The first is a full redesign of the database management system, built around time-bound claims logic so that detention centre activity, legislation changes, and cross-references are always compared against the laws and conditions valid at the moment they apply. The second is a public data explorer that lets GDP present trends and changes over time, support granular filtering, embed datasets in reports and partner sites, and add interactive data windows directly into online publications.
The work started in late 2025 with kickoff and the first implementation plan, and continued through a design workshop in Berlin in March 2026 with the GDP, Dot Studio, and Draftlab teams.
Skills applied
Updates
Design workshop in Berlin
Draftlab, Dot Studio, and the Global Detention Project team met in Berlin for a design workshop. We worked through the DBMS data model and interaction patterns for the data explorer.
Project kickoff and implementation plan
Kicked off the GDP overhaul and built the first implementation plan: a phased rollout across the database management system and the public data explorer.