Justice Innovations

The arrest process is flawed. When a police officer arrests and books a defendant, they are taken to jail. The criminal complaint is filed, judge sets bail and appoints defense counsel for the accused. Inadequate cases are dropped weeks/months later by prosecutors. This happens only after costly investigations & before the accused spent time in jail. We have uncovered a racially blind solution to this unjust inefficiency: prosecutors receive information from the police officer at the moment of arrest. The officer explains the circumstances of the arrest, and the prosecutor evaluates whether it meets the required elements of the crime before the individual touches the justice system. If satisfied, the arrest is accepted, and only then does the person go to jail. Our software guides this proven process and ensures this streamlined communication with all parties, minimizes costly errors, keeps innocent people out of jail, and saves millions annually.

Racial disparity in the justice system is no secret. Nearly half of black males in the US are arrested by age 23. In Miami, almost 40% of arrests are dropped, because it failed to meet the legal standard of the crime. This is after days/months in jail and loss of income, job, home, family, etc. The Justice Innovation system eliminates race, gender, from the arrest equation.  The prosecutor who accepts or denies the charge doesn't know the race or gender, the arrest is based on the law, not the person's demographics or appearance. This system has been successfully working in a large city for decades, and our system can scale it to 3,006 counties effecting the safety and lives of 331 million people. The process introduces no new law, it only reorders the current process in a smarter workflow, eliminates race from being a factor in the arrest. Moreover, it saves millions of dollars of wasted resources at the county level. If there's a place that follows the arrest-first, drop later procedure - we can help decrease the number of people that come in contact with the justice system.

The Justice Innovations Intake system is a cloud-based web browser software that is police use to input information about the incident, offender, witnesses, upload photos, video, statements. No extra tech is needed for this to work. In the course of minutes, a prosecutor reviews this information (blind to race, gender, and only told adult or juvenile), and decides if the elements of the crime are met, and only then is the person arrested. The intake software reduces duplicative manual entry, includes dropdown boxes instead of text fields eliminating errors. In Houston, there are 26 ways to spell 'Assault'. The software can pull up criminal histories, talk to other systems, and unify prosecutors, police, and notify jails that individuals are incoming, or send various filing alerts. Those benefits may seem trivial, but they do not exist currently and would prove to be a mammoth improvement. Accompanying the software is expert training by prosecutors that can eventually be recorded for ease and affordability of training, repeating, and scalability. 

 Detaining arrested people before trial is “the greatest expense generated by current pretrial justice practice” and that this includes many whose charges will ultimately be dropped.” (Pre-Trial Justice Institute, 2017). Attorney General Eric Holder estimated this cost the US $9 billion annually (Holder, 2011). 

Justice Innovations is sold to County District & State Attorneys, and as such is a part of the justice process which effects everyone. One of the side effects of this process for prosecutors is a near zero level of dropped cases and wrongful arrests is since the police have to have the acceptance and legal review of the charges before the arrest. This process increases community trust since every arrest has been vetted against the law. The solution impacts police as it gives the real legal training in the field for what evidence to look for like video or witness statements. 

The system benefits the county since the software updates large, bulky legacy mainframes that are archaic, unreliable - which means people can fall through the cracks. Our system is intuitive, enables transparency, and accountability of the stakeholders, while being able to streamline alerts and updates on cases decreasing costly errors. Plus, it takes minutes to book an arrest, not hours meaning the officers can return to the job of ensuring public safety, not billing  expensive over time for redundant paperwork. 

We have worked to understand the current problem and needs of all stakeholders and public, including those most effected by interactions with the justice system. We hold mock interviews with public and officers, we've talked with numerous DA's, and county commissioners, ethicists, and policy makers. The understanding is, we have seen this work in the 4th largest city  which has a near zero dropped case rate. We seek to mirror this process, enabled by our intake & management software in other jurisdictions to move towards a more just, and less racially divergent system. 

Transforming the arrest process is a simple and easy policy change that needs nothing more than the purchase by a District Attorney. Our solution supports this transformative idea with ethical technology. A just system is one that shows no racial bias, but we also know that the fewer people who enter the system, the better for local communities and at scale in terms of safety and justice. We seek to address these areas and be a frontline catalyst to ensure racial equity in the criminal justice system, by providing alternatives to what has been a dehumanizing pipeline that has proven ineffective and damaging for generations.

Yolo County Office of the District Attorney, Sacramento CA has agreed to join a pilot for a year. We have had several other county DA's say they would join, but they do not have the budget this year (due to Covid-19 needs). We have talked with San Antonio, Cameron, Dallas, and Wallace in Texas, along with Miami. We have the building blocks of the software built, and the pilot is critical for us to work with a county to determine moving forward, what is a customization and what can be built in. The SaaS model is an annual license where the software and training for prosecutors is provided to the Office of the DA, officers are trained by our team of experienced prosecutors who have worked in this process for 30 years.

There is only one county in the US using this system full time for all level of crime, and up until recently it was a paper-based filing system. We have spent years working with the insiders of this process to understand how we can leverage technology to digitize, streamline the process into a SaaS that can be scared anywhere where arrests happen. There is no competitor this time. 

Once deployed and piloted in several counties, the effect would indeed be catalytic, we would be showing not only is there a way to keep less people from entering the system, and keeping innocent people out all together, but that there is a proven way to ensure every arrest is a just arrest, and race was an unknown factor when determining who was sent to jail even of just for a day.

Currently, we are at the beginning stage of the pilot with our first county. We hope by next year we can add 18 counties in and 5 years, have a total of 144 counties (conservative est.). The number of people it could effect could be the entire population of Black Americans who disproportionately come in contact with law enforcement and the justice system, their families and community. Essentially, all of us to some degree, directly or indirectly. 

In our journey for a 'more perfect' system begins at the beginning, before the arrest. Success and outcomes are measured by dropped case reduction, jail populations, and racial equity.

2 full time

3 partime

1 contractor

We are a team made of scientists, programmers, startup founders, prosecutors and a major County IT director. All of us have worked in the justice field for decades, and some personally impacted by the system. It is those stories and passion for instilling a process that we know to be effective and making it available to the entire county.

The company is women-led, a rarity in the justice field. We come from a nonprofit called the Center for Science & Law, which is a diverse and inclusive organization. As we are funded to build staff - we look forward to elevating a diverse team into leadership roles and learning from them as well.