Justice

2015 Year in Review

Smart Chicago

This was a big year for community technology in Chicago. Here’s a month-by-month look at some of the things Smart Chicago has shared, supported, and accomplished in 2015.

January: Smart Chicago Model Featured at the Gigabit City Summit

Smart Chicago attended the Gigabit City Summit in Kansas City, MO – a three-day learning and networking opportunity exclusively designed for leaders in current and emerging Gigabit Cities. Cities convened to discuss how to facilitate business & startup growth, spark government innovation, and achieve equity of access in the presence of next generation speeds. You can see our presentation here and read our recap of the event here.  Denise Linn, who we would later hire as our Program Analyst in June, was also at the Gigabit City Summit. Here is her recap of the Summit on the Living Cities blog and her research on digital equity & gigabit cities.

 

Game of Gigs Gigabit City Summit 2015

With the start of 2015 seeing this event and the end seeing Google Fiber’s announced interest in Chicago, the topic of gigabit connectivity has come full circle. Smart Chicago is deep in this work – right at the intersection of city data, access, skills, and infrastructure.

February: Textizen Campaign for Placemaking

Smart Chicago used Textizen to get feedback from residents on the Chicago Complete Streets Program. Chicagoans were asked to give input on utilizing and improving public street spaces. At Smart Chicago, we understand how powerful text message can be to reach new audiences and listen to our community. This was a great collaboration with the City of Chicago’s Department of Transportation. You can read a blog post about the initiative here.

By July, Textizen was purchased by GovDelivery. We see the success of this company— one that started in a Code for America fellowship, became a CfA Accelerator company, as a success for us and our quiet support. We were deeply involved at the product level— sourcing customers, paying for the service, providing brass-tacks product feedback.

March: Expunge.io & Fingerprint Terminal

Expunge.io was launched in January of 2014 as a website that helps start the process of erasing juvenile arrests and/or court records. Smart Chicago has a long history working on Expunge.io starting with the inception of the idea during our #CivicSummer program in 2013. With the support from The Chicago Community Trust, we continue to increase public awareness, support institutions, and document the juvenile expungement application process.

In March, we secured a fingerprint terminal at the Cook County Juvenile Court to help youth get their rap sheet. We know that juvenile expungement is an arduous legal process that prevents many young adults from expunging their records. The fingerprint terminal for the Cook County Juvenile Center helps young adults connect with free legal aid at the Juvenile Expungement Help Desk while also getting their rap sheet — one of the most important pieces to starting the expungement process.

April: Experimental Modes Convening  

Our consultant, Laurenellen McCann, invited technology practitioners to The Chicago Community Trust on April 3 & 4, as part of our Knight Deep Dive work. The Community Information Deep Dive initiative (or just “Deep Dive”, for short) is an experiment in synthesizing new & existing community information projects into a cohesive system for engaging with residents from the seat of a community foundation.

Experimental Modes Group photo

The convening was an investigation into what it means to build civic tech with, not for. It answered the question, “what’s the difference between sentiment and action?” through the experiences from the practitioners in the room. Here is a recap of the day including everyone who attended the convening. Laurenellen conducted an enormous amount of research around this topic which can be found on our website and in this book.

May: Foodborne Chicago Recognized as the Top 25 Innovations in Government

In May, our partner Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) was recognized as a Top 25 program in the American Government Awards competition by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation for its Foodborne Chicago program. Smart Chicago launched Foodborne Chicago in March 2013 with the goal of improving food safety in Chicago by connecting people who complain about food poisoning on Twitter to the people who can help them out —  the Chicago Department of Public Health.

June: City of Chicago Tech Plan 18-month Update

The City of Chicago released the 18-month Update to its Tech Plan and highlighted a number of Smart Chicago projects: Smart Health Centers, Youth-Led Tech, Connect Chicago, Foodborne Chicago, and CUTGroup. The Plan also discussed WindyGrid and the Array of Things sensors — projects where Smart Chicago is a civic engagement partner.  

Read Smart Chicago’s take on the 18-month update here.

July: Youth-Led Tech

We can’t talk about Smart Chicago’s work in 2015 without talking about Youth-Led Tech. Youth-Led Tech was supported by a grant from Get IN Chicago, an organization that supports and evaluated evidence-based programs that lead to a sustainable reductions in violence. For 6 weeks, 140 youth were taught technology curriculum in 5 neighborhoods  across the city of Chicago: Austin, Englewood, Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, and Roseland. After completing 170 hours of WordPress training and content creation, the youth earned their own laptops in a graduation ceremony at Microsoft Chicago’s offices. Youth-Led Tech Celebration Ceremony

Smart Chicago documents everything, not only for our sake, but for the sake of others in the digital skills & access ecosystem. We have released the full curriculum online for anyone to use and adapt. We have our catering data, our instructor hiring process, profiles of our learning environments, and screenshots of the youth websites online. Later in 2015, Susan Crawford wrote a piece about the program in Medium, documenting the philosophy of the tech program where the youth, and not the tech, were prioritized:

There were also social-emotional learning elements of the program — peace circles, restorative justice — and talks about power in the city of Chicago. And here’s where Dan O’Neil’s attention to food fits in: O’Neil says the number one message he wanted to get across to the youth in the program was, “”We love you and we’re never going to let you go.’”

To access more links about Youth-Led Tech, visit this section of our website.

August: Bud Billiken Parade

Smart Chicago partnered with Chicago Defender Charities to support their efforts to include more technology tools (such as live-streaming and Textizen voting) in their programs. In August, we provided text voting during the Bud Billiken Parade so spectators could vote for their favorite youth dance teams, music groups, and performers.

Smart Chicago staff, consultants, Smart Health Navigators, and Youth-Led Tech instructors also marched in the parade! We marched with our friends Gray Era Brass, handing out swag, promoting the text voting campaign, and shared information about Smart Chicago programming.

Bud Billiken Parade 2015 We look forward to continued collaboration with Chicago Defender Charities beyond 2015. For more information on the Bud Billiken Parade, see this blog post.

September: Our Civic Tech Publications & Philosophy

September 2015 saw the launch of publications and thought pieces emphasizing the importance of authentic civic engagement in technology and articulating Smart Chicago’s civic tech framework. We believe that the real heart of civic tech isn’t code, the apps, or the open data. It’s the people. The neighborhood tech youth instructor, for instance, onboards family, friends and neighbors into the digital economy and tech pipeline, but their work is too often hidden or uncelebrated. Executive Director Dan O’Neil penned the Civicist post, “The Real Heart of Civic Tech isn’t Code.” Here’s an excerpt:

Civic tech that doesn’t include people like Akya, Angel, and Farhad leads to a distorted vision of the field. A vision that leads with technical solutions rather than human capacity. A vision that glorifies the power of the developer rather than the collective strengths of a city.

Experimental Modes of Civic Engagement in Civic Tech by Laurenellen McCann was also published in September. This book represents the culmination of the Experimental Modes work under Deep Dive and was fueled by a scan of the field and practitioner convenings. It can be ordered on Amazon and read online. Our friend and former consultant Chris Whitaker also documented his civic tech lessons learned in the Civic Whitaker Anthology. These books are a testament to the great work of the authors, but also catalyze conversation for the civic technology and how the movement be innovative, engaging, and inclusive.

October: NNIP & Chicago’s Data Ecosystem

To build on the data ecosystem research and work of the Chicago School of Data, Smart Chicago started engaging with the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP).  We attended the Dallas NNIP meeting in October. NNIP is a collaborative community of 35+ cities and the Urban Institute. Partners centralize, analyze, and engage residents with neighborhood-level data. You can read our recap of the NNIP meeting lessons and themes in this blog post.

Continuing last year’s work with the Chicago School of Data survey and the Chicago School of Data Days, we seek to coordinate and support Chicago’s strong data ecosystem. Who is in that ecosystem? Institutions like DePaul’s Institute for Housing Studies, the Woodstock Institute, Chapin Hall, and the Heartland Alliance, just to name a few. Here is a taxonomy of this ecosystem that fuels our thought and collaborative framework in this area.

We look forward to continuing our engagement with NNIP and contributing to that network of cross-city practitioners.

November: Smart Health Centers

Our Smart Health Centers program places trained health information specialists in clinics to assist patients in connecting to their own medical records and find reliable information about their own conditions. In 2015, we expanded the program to more locations and hired a few of our Youth-led tech instructors from the summer as navigators. You can read Akya Gossitt’s story about her path leading to becoming a Youth-led Tech instructor and then a Smart Health Center Navigator.

We also began recording and sharing podcasts developed by the Smart Health Center Navigators. The Navigators discuss topics like healthy holiday meals and the digital divide in health care. You can listen to them on the Smart Chicago soundcloud account. We are excited to provide more opportunities like this to our Navigators and amplify their voices.

December: Final Integration of CUTGroup Text Message Solution

In September, we announced that residents can now sign up for CUTGroup via text message. This month, we implemented the last piece of this work where testers can also learn about new testing opportunities and respond to screening questions via text.

We did this work because if you do not have Internet access at home, you are limited by your time commitment on a public computers and might not have a chance to respond toemails in time to participate in a test. Out of our 1,200+ CUTGroup members today, 29% of our testers said their primary form of connecting to the Internet is either via public wifi or their phone with data plan. The impetus behind this project is to serve the large and growing number of residents who do not have regular access to the internet. By adding a text mode, the CUTGroup will be more effective at discovering resident’s voice.

CUTGroup-Twittercard

More in 2016

We thank all of our founders, partners and consultants who have been a crucial part of this work.

The next OpenGov Chicago Meetup: Local Court Data

Christopher Whitaker

opengovchicagoAt the next OpenGov Chicago meetup, set for Wednesday, June 17, 2015, we will learn about the Chicago Justice Project’s (CJP) ongoing engagement with the Office of the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Timothy Evans. Here’s the description of the evening, as written by CJP’s Executive Director, Tracy Siska:

CJP’s engagement is seeking to open access to all the data created by the Court since they started collecting the data in the 1980s (the courts have told CJP they started collecting data either in 1980 or 1988). This means that when approved CJP would receive about 30 years of Court data. CJP requested all the data maintained by the Clerk’s Office on each criminal case filed, appropriately de-identified. To give you some idea how much data we are talking about here are some facts about the Cook County Justice System:

• The Circuit Court of Cook County is the largest unified court system in the US

• The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office is the largest prosecutors office in the US

• The Cook County Jail is the largest jail in the country

This is not a onetime release! CJP is seeking an agreement that would require regular updates of court data be released on an ongoing basis moving forward removing all the current barriers to this data.

Of course, since the Court maintains ownership over the data, but does not maintain the data, the approval by Judge Evans of any request seeking access to court data is only the first step. The second step is having the data released by the Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court, Dorothy Brown’s Office. It took CJP 27 months to get access to the 5 years of conviction data that was the basis of the Convicted in Cook Project.

CJP anticipates significant resistance from the Clerk’s Office to this request. This is the beginning of CJP’s outreach to see if we can build a community of people that will help CJP advocate for the fulfillment of this agreement.

Tracy Siska, Executive Director of the Chicago Justice Project, will talk about CJP’s efforts in more detail and what it will take to get the Court and Clerk to fulfill their request.

We’ll also cover the results of Smart Chicago’s recent PACER postcard campaign, where we helped send dozens of postcards to Chief Judge Ruben Castillo of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Illinois, asking him to look into issues with PACER , the system run by the federal judiciary that provides access to court dockets.

As part of OpenGovChicago efforts to focus on participation— thinking of government as “us” more than “them”— we are inviting hundreds of people who make up student law groups in Chicago-based law schools. If you know anyone who cares about open government and local court data, let them know about this night and register for the event here.

Issue Primer: Safety and Justice

Christopher Whitaker

screenshot-expunge.io_For this year’s National Day of Civic Hacking, we’re writing up primers on different civic issues to help people get a better understanding of the issues as they start working on projects.

Below, we’ve listed out places where you can data on safety and justice, some examples of projects centered around safety and justice, and some resources online to help you with your project.

Safety and Justice

Safety and Justice is a relatively new broad term that used to describe the subject areas of criminal justice, public safety and reform efforts. The term is also used to try to bridge the tension between the need to keep our communities safe while ensuring that the mechanisms used to do that are equitable and fair.

While the topic may be broad, there are some very specific challenges that are on the forefront.

Overcrowding at Jails 

When people get charged with a crime, they are sent to jail. If they can secure a bond (a payment made to the court to secure their appearance at trial), then they are released on bail. If they can not, then they are placed in jail to await their trial at a cost to the government that’s often greater than the amount of their bond. (By contrast, Prisons are where people are sent after they have been convicted of a crime – they are not the same thing.)

According to the Vera Institute for Justice, even as crime has gone down the population of jails has increased nationally as economically disadvantaged people fill the prisons because they are unable to make bail. According to the study, 75% of people currently in jail awaiting trial are there for nonviolent crimes like property, traffic, or drug crimes. The overcrowding of prisons largely impacts people in low income neighborhoods and communities of color. Per the NAACP, African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites.

The other element is that some jails have become dumping grounds for the mentally ill.

Tom Dart is the sheriff of Cook County, where he oversees what he calls the largest mental health facility in the State of Illinois. In 45 states, the largest mental health provider is a prison or a jail.

There are a number of things that governments like Cook County are trying to do to address the issue including electronic monitoring and alternative sentencing (often where the inmate is diverted to a treatment facility instead of incarceration.) However, impending budget cuts may stem progress.

This trend of more people in the system is also occurring at the same time overall crime is trending down nationally.

Juvenile Justice 

Another big challenge that people in this area tend to focus on is juvenile justice. Convictions for criminal convictions tend to skew young – particularly in economically depressed areas. The problem is often exacerbated by cuts in school funding and youth programs designed to keep youth away from gangs. In addition, the victims of gun violence are also disproportionately young and male.

Once a person turns 18, there are ways to have a juvenile record expunged. This doesn’t just mean the case is removed from a criminal record – expungement means that in the eyes of the law the incident never existed.  So, for example, if a person is asked on a job application if they’ve ever been arrested for a crime they can legally answer “No” if that incident was expunged.

However, in many states this isn’t automatic. The resident has to go through a legal process that can be complicated. Even if the resident wasn’t found guilty or had their case dismissed, they may still have a criminal record which can prevent them from getting a job, joining the military, or getting into college.

Even when an expungement is successful and in the eyes of the law didn’t happen, the Internet has a long memory. In some cases, news stories about an arrest still exist and come up first in google searches even if the person wasn’t convicted. In worst cases, nefarious businesses make money by scraping mugshot pictures from government websites then charging people to remove them. Google has recently changed the search algorithm to push mugshot sites down the results list and the FBI has asked victims of these schemes to file a complaint.

A complex system 

Tackling problems in the criminal justice system can seem daunting simply because of the complexity of the system. The criminal justice systems is made up of many government entities at the local, state, and federal level that each handle a different aspect of the system. From a data perspective, each agency has it’s own data system and very little of it is handed off from one part to the other. (So, you couldn’t take one incident report number and trace it all the way through to somebody being sentenced to prison.)

Data Sources

We’ve highlighted some data sets that pertain to the area of safety and justice below. However, because the criminal justice system is complex it may be of use to check out Crime and Punishment in Chicago to get a better sense of the different aspects of data available. You can also check out the Sunlight Foundation’s excellent coverage on the topic – including a Google Doc that showcases a list of known data resources nationwide.

National Crime Victimization Survey (US Department of Justice): This research helps the justice department measure how many people are victims of certain kinds of crimes, or the victimization rates.

Dallas Police Department Call of Service: This data release stands out because it identifies the units responding to each event, a link to map that will display the block from where the call originated, and the status of the call, among other included data fields. However, the data can’t be downloaded.

Chicago Crimes 2001 – Present: This dataset reflects reported incidents of crime (with the exception of murders where data exists for each victim) that occurred in the City of Chicago from 2001 to present, minus the most recent seven days.

Henrico County (VA) Arrest Reports: Arrest data is searchable, but not downloadable in bulk.

Cuyahoga County Office of the Prosecutor (Ohio): Includes a performance dashboard that includes dispositions statistics, juvenile dispositions, cold case rapes, heroin deaths and prosecutions, incarceration statistics, and charging statistics.

King County (WA) Adult Bookings: The Jail Bookings Open Data dataset is provided by the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. The dataset contains adult jail bookings which have occurred within the last twelve months; specific dates are indicated on the web site.

Maryland State Courts: Website lists what occurs in every court hearing while also detailing information regarding the officer that arrested the defendant, the prosecutor(s) prosecuting the case, and the judge presiding over the case. (No bulk download)

Oregon Prison Population: Dates and the count of inmates in the State of Oregon’s prison system for the date. Based on a DOC report for 1980 -1993. Based on query of DOC data for 1994-current

Potential Partners

Legal Aid: Legal aid foundations and societies offer free legal services to clients that may not be able to afford these services on their own. Many of the apps that focus on expungement, have legal aid foundations as partners.

Code for America Safety and Justice Focus Team: Code for America partners with local governments to build and grow digital safety and justice services focused on increasing public safety and reducing costs, helping governments transform themselves along the way.

Neighborhood Organizations: Neighborhood organizations play a vital role in building relationships between residents, public officials, and other non-profit organizations.

Examples of Safety and Justice Related Projects

Expunge.io: Expunge.io is a website designed for people with juvenile records in Illinois to kick of the process of expunging, or erasing, those records. It is a youth-led project run by Smart Chicago and controlled by the Mikva Challenge Juvenile Justice Council.

Jail Population Management Dashboard: Jail Population Management Dashboard helps judges and other stakeholders understand the conditions in the metro jail and use this data to visualize how their decisions affect program, facility and inmate outcomes.

Convicted in Cook: Convicted in Cook is a project that analyzes five years worth of conviction data received through the Office of the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County by the Chicago Justice Project.

Courtbot: Courtbot is a simple web service for handling court case data. It offers a basic HTTP endpoint for integration with websites, and a set of advanced twilio workflows to handle text-based lookup. It’s been deployed by Atlanta to help people pay their traffic tickets online instead of waiting in line at traffic court.

People to follow on Twitter:

@TomDart: Sheriff of Cook County. Bringing an innovative approach to law enforcement in the second most populous county in the US.

@MarshalProj: The Marshall Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom covering America’s criminal justice system. Tweets usually from @amandablair.

@PublicSafety: The Coalition for Public Safety is working to reform our criminal justice system to make it more just, more fair, and more effective.

 

 

 

Results of Our PACER Postcard Campaign

Smart Chicago

Today our colleague Elizabeth Bartels collected 31 postcards from law students, lawyers, and interested residents sharing their thoughts about making the PACER federal court document system more accessible and open to all.

One reason we’re so happy with these results is that everyone who completed a postcard is an actual registered user of PACER. It’s one thing to be an open information advocate, writing to a distant federal official about the concept of openness. It’s another thing altogether to be an actual user of the software, someone building their career, someone who will be working directly with Judge Ruben Castillo on important matters of justice.

When we approached this campaign, in which we joined with people in San Francisco and New York, we did so with a focus on building real relationships with people here in Chicago who are passionate about this issue of open law. We hired Oprima-1 to research contact information for law school interest groups.

Some examples: the Muslim Law Students Association of the University Chicago Law School, the Justinian Society of John Marshall Law School, the Student Funded Public Interest Fellowships Program of Northwestern University, the American Civil Liberties Union of Loyola University Chicago, the Journal of Intellectual Property at Chicago-Kent College of Law, and the DePaul Entertainment and Sports Law Society.

The point: there are a lot of people (in 187 student groups and 449 law firms) who care about this topic. Moving beyond our own circles, our own tight spheres of civic tech and open data, our own Slack channels and our own favored blogs, is essential. As we’ve re-learned, in great detail, in our Experimental Modes project, if we want to be of impact, we have to meet people where they are.

That’s hard work. We’re happy we do it, because it’s all that matters. Here’s pictures from our day.

Our first cards

Our first cards

On the agenda at John Marshall Law School

On the agenda at John Marshall Law School

Postcard from Daniel X. O'Neil

Postcard from Daniel X. O’Neil

Elizabeth Bartels working with students who are completing postcards at John Marshall Law School

Elizabeth Bartels working with students who are completing postcards at John Marshall Law School

Elizabeth Bartels working with students who are completing postcards at John Marshall Law School

Elizabeth Bartels working with students who are completing postcards at John Marshall Law School

Some postcards!

Some postcards!

Swartz Law Day 2015

Swartz Law Day 2015

Our final results

Our final results

We gave away copies of In Re: PACER to all

We gave away copies of In Re: PACER to all

Many postcards to choose from.

Many postcards to choose from.

Custom stamps (and buttons!)

Custom stamps (and buttons!)

Here’s a look at every completed postcard— lots of great comments:

Finally, a very special shout-out to my friend, sister-in-law, and John Marshall Law School valedictorian Elizabeth Bartels for leading the way on this project.
Elizabeth Bartels

Elizabeth Bartels

Join the Mass Pacer Postcard Campaign

Smart Chicago

On this Friday, May 1, 2015— Law Day— the Smart Chicago Collaborative is joining with colleagues across the country to participate in “An Appeal For Postcards”.

We’re asking law students, lawyers, and anyone who cares about the law to write a brief note about why they think that access to PACER is important. Come to John Marshall Law School, 315 S. Plymouth Court to complete a postcard and get your voice heard.

Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an electronic public access service that allows people to obtain case and docket information online from federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts, and the PACER Case Locator.

There are a multitude of issues with PACER, many of which are detailed here at Yo.YourHonor.Org. PACER is a complex, cost-filled, and technically primitive system that unnecessarily impedes the free flow of information about our courts and our law. “This is about access to justice, about innovation in our legal system, this is about basic principles of due process and equal protection in our democratic system.”

Here’s our plan for Chicago:

  • We have 100 postcards, pre-addressed to the Chief Judge of the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois. These are custom-printed postcards with Library of Congress images of some of the greatest legal thinkers in American history.
  • The postcards have similarly custom stamps— we will make sure they get to the right place after we take pictures to document our campaign and show the depth of support
  • This Friday, May 1, 2015, from 11AM to 3PM, we will have a table at the Plymouth Lobby of the John Marshall Law School, 315 S. Plymouth Court. Stop by, fill out a postcard, and add your voice.
  • Elizabeth Bartels, a previous valedictorian of John Marshall, will be leading our effort there.
  • We have about 20 copies of the paperback pamphlet, In Re: Pacer for those first to contribute postcards.

This program is a part of our Justice program here at Smart Chicago. The beginning of May has had a long and proud history in Chicago, serving as a day of action and reflection about the role of the masses in society. We’re proud to be a part of this national effort. Please join us!

Law School, Night

Law School, Night

PACER Cards + Letters Campaign for National Law Day

Smart Chicago

Pacer CupAs part of our Justice program, The Smart Chicago Collaborative, along with a number of friends from around the nation, is conducting a cards + letters campaign to ask Chief Judge Ruben Castillo of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Illinois to look into issues with PACER, the system run by the federal judiciary that provides access to court dockets.

PACER is difficult to use, has a complicated and onerous fee structure, and is otherwise an impediment to the sharing of information about the decisions and actions of our federal court system.

The impetus for this campaign can be found in the text of “In re: PACER” by Carl Malamud of  Public.Resource.Org. Carl has long been a leading protector of the public domain and this pamphlet is a marvelous primer on the topic.

We are organizing our campaign around May 1, 2015. Among other things, May 1 is Law Day, which is “meant to reflect on the role of law in the foundation of the country and to recognize its importance for society”.

Right now we are searching for partners in our campaign. We are looking to connect with law schools, law firms, and regular residents of the district to write cards + letters and get their neighbors to do the same.

Are you interested in helping change the relationship between the people and their courts? Hit us up at .

In re: PACER homepage