SJC Exchange Library

Chris Saunders manages the Ada County Sheriff’s Office’s data analytics intelligence division. His primary job is to work with statistics and numbers, but he also teaches what’s known as “implicit bias training,” which the sheriff’s office has implemented with funding from the MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge. Saunders worked with two other Ada County Sheriff's Office employees, Jeffrey Austin and Ryan Wilke, to develop the training; all told, it cost $4,475, according to Patrick Orr, spokesman for the office. The goal of the training, which Saunders has taught more than a dozen times since August 2017, is to help officers realize the unavoidable subconscious human biases they have and the ways in which those biases might affect their actions as police officers.