Suzy Connor Joins Smart Chicago as Consultant Focusing on Arts, Justice, and Education

Suzanne Connor - 2015[1][2]Yesterday marked the start of Suzy Connor’s work here at Smart Chicago. We’ve worked with Suzy over the last couple years in her work as the senior program officer for arts and culture at The Chicago Community Trust, where she created the Arts Infusion program and was responsible for a host of other grants that enhanced cultural vibrancy, access and diversity.

Most recently, we worked with her to launch Get Drive, a project that compiled resources for court-involved youth to clear their records (expunge.io!), get back in school, get a job, and get other support.

Suzy’s work over the years aligns perfectly with Smart Chicago’s work to improve lives in Chicago through technology mission.  We’re excited about combining her professional expertise, experience, and networks in creative youth development & juvenile justice with our emerging models around civic engagement.

Suzy will strengthen the Smart Chicago justice work area and will help inform or stimulate our Connect Chicago, Chicago School of Data, and Youth-Led Tech programs. Her engagement will employ a number of the experimental modes we’ve investigated and we expect to be able to create new ones together.

Here’s a specific look at the work she’ll be doing:

Arts Infusion

Arts Infusion Evaluation FINAL REPORTOver the last six years at The Chicago Community Trust, Suzy created and led Arts Infusion. The Urban Institute recently completed a comprehensive evaluation of this program: Arts Infusion Initiative, 2010–15: Evaluation Report. The report is fascinating, and we will be sharing findings from report as we move forward.

Suzy will work to continue and expand the Arts Infusion cohort, focusing on teaching artists rather than organizations, with the goal of building a deep, diverse, and resilient community of practitioners. Our expansion efforts will include both arts-focused and technology-focused instructors working with teens and young adults in under-resourced communities, including court-involved youth.

Together, we will develop a coherent co-creation strategy with this cohort with communication at its core. The foundation of this cohort is not grants; it is communication and shared work. A civic engagement model rather than a social services model, based on principles found in Experimental Modes of Civic Engagement. We seek to help guide an expanded network to foster innovative approaches and respond to the needs articulated by practitioners themselves. Integral to this approach is the inclusion of young adult practitioners who are “alumni” of Chicago’s teen programs.

Connecting youth to technology

YouthledTech-logoSuzy will also work to strengthen the links among released juveniles and Arts Infusion grantees, other arts and technology programs, and relevant resources. Smart Chicago is already a partner in this effort through Get Drive and Expunge.io.

We will incorporate recommendations from the Urban Institute evaluation to enhance strategies for using technology and social media to spark & sustain connections between court-involved youth and the people and resources they need to move forward in life.

This work also ties into our Youth-Led Tech program, where we will look to work in the detention center and connect those youth to community opportunities to build their skills. We’re also looking to evaluate how to replicate the Youth-Led Tech mode.

CPS Digital Arts Career Academy

Suzy will also lead Smart Chicago’s efforts to help to guide engagement, design, and advocacy efforts related to the development of a potential CPS Digital Arts Career Academy. Our focus will be on engaging the public and helping foster communication with the community around planning.

Smart Chicago’s commitment to developing a diverse IT workforce and its recent success with Youth-Led Tech makes it a valuable partner to CPS in this first-of-its-kind initiative.

Chicago Track

chicago-trackLastly, and more loosely, Suzy will help the Trust grantee Office of Creative Industries at the City of Chicago to connect to the broader context of workforce development, which brings back the lessons of Investing in people and organizations as the key to civic tech.  

We’re interested in helping build the workforce pipeline in digital media by integrating the Chicago Track project and career-oriented digital media nonprofits with the workforce development and technology sectors that are more adept at tracking trends and job growth. We hope to leverage the combination of our commitment to juvenile justice, the needs of the tech community for diversity, and the opportunity to strengthen a career pipeline for an important constituency in our city.

Join us in welcoming Suzy to Smart Chicago.

2015 Year in Review

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 fellowshipbecame 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 2015We 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 founderspartners and consultants who have been a crucial part of this work.

On Open Data + Mass Joy at the Personal Democracy Forum

Last week I spoke at the Personal Democracy Forum about the Jackie Robinson West Little League baseball team, open data, and what we should do as practitioners of civic tech and members of society.
Slide01

Here’s a video:

And here are the notes I used for the talk:

 

Yesterday morning here at PDF, we heard, for the first time I can remember in the world of civic tech, a lot about the workers and the masses. Specifically, the morning sessions around Civic Tech and Powerful Movements:

Reckoning With Power
Eric Liu
Creative Collision: How Business and Social Movements Will Reshape Our Future
Palak Shah
Putting Labor in the Lab: How Workers Are Rebooting Their Future
Carmen Rojas
Labor Codes: The Power of Employee-Led Online Organizing
Jess Kutch
Powerful Platform, Powerful Movements
Dante Barry
The Net as a Public Utility
Harold Feld

In the summer of 2014, in the city of Chicago, Illinois, a youth baseball team called Jackie Robinson West came out of nowhere (well, at least according to the vast millions of Chicagoans who don’t follow such things) to compete for the World Championship in the Little League Baseball World Series.

Slide02

It was a team of African-American kids from Chicago’s South Side, and they competed and won at the highest levels. They beat some kids from Las Vegas to play for world championship. Their uniforms said, “Great Lakes”, which makes sense when you’re looking at a map of the world for a world series.

Slide03

They lost, but valiantly. For about a week and a half, a segregated city was united on something completely incontrovertible: that these kids were awesome, and they were ours. Cue the parade, the T-shirt sales, the mass joy. This was a shared experience that politicians and regular people crave— to be in communion. A surprise summer experience. So we had a parade. The route was amazing.

Slide04

The kids were on floats and they got adoration.

Slide05

Then, one morning in February we learned in breaking news fashion that Jackie Robinson West’s U.S. title was vacated. They had placed players on their team who did not qualify to play because they lived outside the team’s boundaries.

Slide06

We discovered that a coach from an opposing team from the suburbs of Chicago (the Evergreen Park Athletic Association vice president) had discovered this fact and brought it to the attention of the officials at Little League Baseball.

Slide07

This matter is based on the stuff that civic tech is made of— boundaries, maps, points, addresses, data, records, municipalities. It felt so “us”. Civic tech methodology.

Slide08

 

And I realized this vice-president of a suburban little league baseball association was one of us. Just another person who used public data to answer a question— to achieve his civic goals. And he was right. He was a whistleblower. Based on dots. Based on facts. To be fair— based on true data.

But what should we do— those of us in civic tech— what should we do? what should we work on? Mass joy.

Slide09

At Smart Chicago, that’s what we focus on. Smart Chicago is a civic organization devoted to improving lives in Chicago through technology. We work on increasing access to the Internet, improving skills for using the Internet, and developing meaningful products from data that measurably contribute to the quality of life of residents in our region and beyond. Our three primary areas of focus under which we organize all of our work: Access to the Internet & technology, Skills to use technology once you’ve got access, and Data, which we construe as something meaningful to look at once you have access and skills.

Our Civic Works project, funded in part by the Knight Foundation, a program funded by the Knight Foundation and the Chicago Community Trust to spur support for civic innovation in Chicago. Part of what we do is support an ecosystem of products, people, and services to have more impact. One of the products we support is Textizen, a web platform that sends, receives, and analyzes text messages so you can reach the people you serve. Mass joy through voting on dance competitions.

Slide10

Another project is Smart Health Centers, a project that 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. We employ people who have never been a part of the IT industry and give them good jobs helping people with computers. Mass joy through knowledge and jobs.

Slide11

Another is the Civic User Testing Group, a set of regular Chicago residents who get paid to test civic apps. We tested our product, Expunge.io, with real people. The joy of clearing one’s name and being heard.

Slide12

I am a father of two boys, both of whom have played youth baseball for years. There’s joy there, I know it. You’re at third base, don’t stay here.

Slide13

There’s a rainbow over home plate. Go get it.

Slide14

We have choices every day when we wake up. Let’s make sure we make the right ones.

 

Smart Chicago, Expunge.io, and Ecosystem

This is one in a series of posts that help us at Smart Chicago to develop a cohesive product strategy that helps us deliver on the promise of access, skills, and data. As we’ve grown, more and more cities have an interest in how Smart Chicago works and how the model can be used near them. These detailed posts, showing all of the steps we take, are a way to keep us in check locally while be of service nationally. Here’s more information on our model.

Expunge.io is a youth-led project.

Continue reading

Continuing the Work of Expunge.io

Smart Chicago was recently awarded a grant from The Chicago Community Trust to support Expunge.io. This grant, referred to as “Expunge.io Plus,” supports the great work already happening with Mikva Challenge Juvenile Justice Council, LAF, Illinois Legal Aid Online, Cabrini Green Legal Aid, and others, by increasing public awareness, supporting the work of institutions, and documenting the juvenile expungement application process.

Screenshot 2014-10-29 18.09.46

There are five main goals of this work:

  • Increase public awareness regarding juvenile expungements
  • Drive more young adults to the Cook County Juvenile Expungement Help Desk
  • Secure a fingerprint terminal to obtain a copy of arrest records at the Cook County Juvenile Expungement Help Desk
  • Provide project management services to ensure project completion
  • Research data management services to document baseline information in how young people’s records are used once they are disseminated. See a blog post on this topic: “Getting at the Root of Issues with Juvenile Records“)

Background

We know that juvenile expungement is an arduous legal process that prevents many young adults from applying to have their records expunged. The impact of having misdemeanors and/or other lesser forms of criminal activity easily accessible to college admission departments and employers may hinder high school graduates from obtaining advanced degrees or securing career opportunities.

While many records can be erased, people  who are eligible for expungement often do not initiate or complete the process because it is complicated, understaffed, and fragmented.

Expunge.io is an on-ramp for the expungement process that helps start the process of erasing juvenile arrests/court records by sending people to the  Juvenile Expungement Help Desk. The Juvenile Expungement Help Desk is a place where individuals can meet with an attorney who will review juvenile arrest record, assist with the necessary paperwork and provide additional legal assistance. Lawyers are all available to help eligible people file fee waivers to expunge their records free of charge.

On June 9, 2014, the Juvenile Court Automatic Expungement SB 0978 passed allowing automatic expungements for offenses occurring on or after January 1, 2015 and for those records kept with the Illinois Police Department. It does not remove records maintained at the local law enforcement agency, court clerk, or with the FBI agency nor is it retroactive. Here is a look at the Juvenile Court Automatic Expungement SB 0978:

Replaces everything after the enacting clause. Amends the Juvenile Court Act of 1987. Provides that the Department of State Police shall automatically expunge, on an annual basis, law enforcement records pertaining to a minor who has been arrested if: (1) the minor had been arrested and no delinquency petition was filed with the clerk of the circuit court; (2) the minor has attained the age of 18 years; and (3) since the date of the minor’s most recent arrest, at least 6 months have elapsed without an additional arrest. Provides that a petition for expungement may include multiple offenses on the same petition, if the petitioner is 18 years of age or older and when a minor was arrested and no delinquency petition filed or if filed was found not delinquent of the offense or supervision successfully completed, or the offense would be a Class B misdemeanor or lesser offense if committed by an adult. Provides that the Department of State Police shall expunge all law enforcement records described in this provision on an annual basis. Provides that the Department of State Police shall establish a process for an individual to confirm that all law enforcement records described in this provision have been expunged on an annual basis.

Flooding the box

Through this grant, Smart Chicago wants to drive more people to the Juvenile Expungement Help Desk. We call this “flooding the box”.  Expunge.io is one step in doing that. Here is a look at the strategies and work outlined in the grant proposal:

Strategy I: Increase awareness about the relevance of juvenile expungements and the purpose and limitations of the SB 0978 – Juvenile Court Automatic Expungements through community involvement

Activity I: Develop public awareness through direct community outreach. Smart Chicago will fund events to

  1. Drive young adults to the Cook County Juvenile Court Help Desk to obtain their arrest record and receive free legal help
  2. Host community level expungement sessions whereby juveniles can also begin the expungement application process
  3. Develop a texting campaign with Illinois Legal Aid Online. In addition, Smart Chicago will coordinate efforts with several partners to develop a marketing campaign to educate people about the expungement process using Expunge.io as the jumping off point. These partners include Mikva Challenge, Civic User Testing Group (CUTGroup), Illinois legal Aid Online, among others
Strategy II: Structure an enhanced service-oriented and efficient application process

Activity I: Secure fingerprint terminal to be stationed at the Cook County Juvenile Court
Activity II: Develop communication strategy to target young adults to apply for juvenile expungements and informing them regarding their application status
Activity III: Expand the Expunge.io website to provide additional information, better filtering system between juveniles and adult expungements, and improve the technology connection between applicant and free legal services

Strategy III: Provide project and data management to understand the expungement process

Activity I: Document the application process for general public and website distribution
Activity II: Manage the initiative and its network of partners
Activity III: Identify and document how expungement records are disseminated and what happens to data after a record is expunged

Getting at the Root of Issues with Juvenile Records

Here at Smart Chicago, we are interested in technology that helps improves the lives of regular Chicago residents. Expunge.io, a simple tool for kicking off the expungement process by  by Cathy Deng and the Mikva Challenge Juvenile Justice Council, is a good example of that.

We’re also interested in helping bring along smart policies that mitigate the need for tech-based workarounds like Expunge.io. Illinois Senate Bill 0978 is a good example of that. Here’s the relevant portion of that legislation:

the Department of State Police shall automatically expunge, on or before January 1 of each year, a person’s law enforcement records relating to incidents occurring before his or her 18th birthday in the Department’s possession or control which pertain to the person when arrested as a minor if: (1) the minor was arrested for an eligible offense and no petition for delinquency was filed with the clerk of the circuit court; (2) the person attained the age of 18 years during the last calendar year; and (3) since the date of the minor’s most recent arrest, at least 6 months have elapsed without an additional arrest, filing of a petition for delinquency whether related or not to a previous arrest, or filing of changes not initiated by arrest.

Again, this is a great step in changing the law around the complex process of expungement. But this article in the Illinois State Bar Journal, Juvenile Justice, Part I: Automatic expungement of juvenile records, hints at the more difficult data/ technology realities behind juvenile records management.

One young woman completed an Illinois Job Corps program and when she applied for her pharmacy technician license, the licensing agency learned that she had an “aggravated battery” on her record, said Carolyn Frazier, an attorney and clinical law professor with the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law. The girl was involved in a fight with other girls at school and was never charged with a crime, yet in some database, her arrest was listed without any dispositional information. Similarly, young man working as a janitor at a Chicago public school was fired after one of his annual background checks showed two arrests. Neither resulted in delinquency petitions or a finding of guilt.

As Frazier put it, we’re in a “brave new world of data integration” where municipalities small and large are sharing information with one another, the state, and the federal government. State police used to send information to the FBI, but that practice ended three years ago.

And the root of the harm:

Like other juvenile justice advocates, Frazier would like to see a legislative commission established to get to the root of why and how confidential information involving minors is being released.

As long as juvenile records are obtained and trafficked by unethical data purveyors, the eventual expungement of that record can have limited value.

Think of it this way: if someone discovers a lie about you in a database on a Tuesday (like the woman with an “aggravated battery” on her record who was never charged with a crime) and that lie is copied to a new database, owned by an unscrupulous data merchant, and the lie is removed from that database on a Wednesday (a successful expungement), the lie from Tuesday still exists, and can still cause harm.

We’ve got to get at the root.

On the launch of Crime and Punishment in Chicago

Smart Chicago Collaborative is proud to launch our latest Civic Works Project: Crime and Punishment in Chicago. This project is a collaborative effort among Smart Chicago, FreeGeekChicago, and the Chicago Justice Project.

Chicago Police Department Memorial at Buckingham Fountain

Photo by Chris Smith / Flikr

The Crime and Punishment in Chicago project provides an index of data sources regarding the criminal justice system in Chicago. We aggregate sources of data, how this data is generated, how to get it, and what data is unavailable. This project is a key way we are using the Civic Works grant to use data journalism to uncover the value of data and cover the stories behind the data.

Continue reading

On the Launch of Expunge.io

We host a lot of apps at Smart Chicago through our Developer Resources program. In many instances, we get a request, fire up an EC2 instance, and the site is off and running. In other instances, we provide hours of behind-the-scenes technical assistance, product advice, and general jibber-jabber. Other times, we conceive of and execute on the thing on our own, or develop a site for clients.

Today’s launch of Expunge.io by Cathy Deng and the Mikva Challenge Juvenile Justice Council (JJC) is in a category all by itself. The site, which helps start the process of erasing juvenile arrests and/or court records, is pretty much why we exist. For us, it grew naturally out of work we did over our CivicSummer, interacting with youth on the JJC about what interested them, where their research took them, and what issues mattered most to them.

Then, as summer became autumn, I talked on a regular basis with the intrepid and indefatigable Chris Rudd about the need for an app that helped sort out the essential but obtuse process of expungement.

He never gave up, he never stopped talking about it, and he never stopped learning. We talked about how the core of the app was not the technology— it was the info that he, the JJC youth, and their partners like the people at the Juvenile Expungement Help Desk had and had to share.

Then comes Cathy Deng, a super-smart developer looking to do civic apps that make a difference. We had invited her to join us at our final #CivicSumer session at Roosevelt University, where she got a feel for what everyone was up to and connected to people on Twitter. Then came this:

We set them up with space, and Smart Chicago tech consultant & general civic tech godfather Scott Robbin provided some tech guidance. Mikva Challenge Executive Director Brian Brady supported all of this with the vision of a creative organization not bogged down by process. The legal partners and justice system personnel have been highly supportive.

So here we are today. If you know anyone with a juvenile record and 4 minutes of extra time on their hands, send them to Expunge.io now.