Antiracist Technology in the US
JusticeText
Centralized infrastructure to store, catalog, analyze, and share video discovery in the criminal justice system to improve case outcomes for low-income defendants
One-line solution summary:
JusticeText improves criminal justice outcomes for indigent Americans by expediting the review of body camera footage, jail calls, and more.
Pitch your solution.
Racial disparities in the criminal justice system are at the forefront of US national dialogue. And as we have seen time and time again, video evidence has proven to be a powerful vehicle for justice in the recent tragedies of people like George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Laquan McDonald.
Our justice system is being inundated by the 3.3 trillion hours of video captured everyday worldwide from surveillance cameras, body-worn cameras, and more. While video evidence is involved in over 80% of criminal cases, this crucial data can easily go overlooked without the tools to analyze it.
We are building an audiovisual evidence management platform that strengthens the ability of public defenders to extract critical information from digital discovery. Our product ultimately reduces the amount of time low-income criminal defendants spend in jail and improves the quality of the defense they receive in trial.
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Our nation’s 15,000 public defenders serve over 5.6 million low-income individuals every year. To see how thoroughly poverty is criminalized in America, we need only look at a 2015 Bureau of Justice Statistics study which reveals that over 80% of felony defendants in the largest counties rely on publicly financed attorneys. Unfortunately, public defenders are obligated to assume responsibility for far more clients than they can be reasonably expected to protect. This crisis is further exacerbated by the lack of technology designed for public defense, especially as digital surveillance transforms the very nature of the modern justice system.
A staggering 93% of public defenders in Virginia reported difficulty in finding time to review all the footage for their cases. The longer it takes for lawyers to review the data, the longer everyday citizens spend detained in our nation’s jails. A Chief Public Defender in Kansas recently told us, “I do have a case right now where a client looking at damn near 100 years in prison needs help. Specifically, there are about 500 jail calls that need to be reviewed in hopes that we can find the needle of one conversation in that larger haystack of 500 jail calls."
What is your solution?
As technologists of color, my co-founder and I are grounded in a sociological and historical appreciation for the complexities of the American criminal justice system—with its gaping faults and inequality but also its capacity for reform.
Our web-based evidence management software employs automated speech recognition algorithms to generate interactive transcripts of audiovisual evidence. Attorneys use the software to take timestamped notes, create video clips, and catalog their digital discovery. We also identify keywords that may be of interest to criminal defense lawyers, including references to crimes, medical conditions, and legal terminology. We are equipping public defenders with the tools needed to identify instances of racial profiling, coercive interrogation tactics, and any other violations of their clients’ rights.
A criminal legal aid attorney in Georgia said, ”It allows us to do better work and more work for each of our clients because we don't have to focus so much on listening to videos and jail calls for hours at a time. We have a case with well over 100 jail calls, and using JusticeText has given us a way to decide which ones are important more quickly."
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
To date, we have partnered with public defense agencies, legal aid nonprofits, and private criminal defense attorneys across 8 states, including Virginia, New York, Georgia, and Colorado.
Over two-thirds of the public defenders we surveyed encounter 10+ hours of audiovisual evidence every month. These recordings of police interactions, witness interrogations, and jailhouse phone conversations help attorneys craft a stronger case in defense of their clients. However, with their unsustainably high caseloads, public defenders lack the bandwidth to review it all. Robert Moody from the Newport News Public Defender was quoted in The Virginian-Pilot as saying, “It is completely overwhelming. There’s no way physically possible I can watch the (video) data dumps they give me.” This has a direct impact on the hundreds of thousands of low-income individuals detained in our nation’s jails pre-trial, 70% of whom have never been convicted of a crime.
By empowering public defenders to more effectively process digital evidence, our product helps ensure that their clients receive access to fairer, more expedited outcomes. Here are testimonials from a few early adopters:
“At every point of the case you’re working with discovery, whether it’s advising a client about options, or you’re negotiating, or you’re getting ready for trial. JusticeText has been so helpful during these processes. I used to have to do two passes through any video and audio discovery. JusticeText allows me to do just one pass through the content, cutting the amount of time that I spend on review in half.”
Public Defender in Texas
“The written transcript [in JusticeText] made it much easier for [us] to go through the discovery and determine that we didn’t even need another statement (because the recorded statement was a slam dunk for the defense…officer caught saying that he didn’t think our client should be charged). An added bonus was that we now had it in writing for the prosecutor to read (and hopefully realize that they had no case).”
Investigator in Minnesota
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Create new public safety systems that ensure racial equity and provide alternatives to harmful technologies such as biased facial recognition.Explain how the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge.
Just a year prior to my move to Chicago, an unarmed African American teenager named Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by a police officer. Following this tragedy, we saw a proliferation of facial recognition software, gang databases, and predictive policing tools - all technology applications designed to expedite arrest and incarceration.
In our increasingly technology-dependent criminal justice system, there is an utter lack of digital solutions built with empathy for the communities most directly affected by it. And that is exactly why we are centering the needs of low-income, communities of color in building software for public defenders.
What is your solution’s stage of development?
Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growth.In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Irvine, CA, USAExplain why you selected this stage of development for your solution.
Over the course of the past eight months, 500 users from ten different public defense agencies have tested our product through structured pilot programs. They have offered us valuable feedback that has inspired the implementation of context-specific features, substantial UI redesigns, and a more comprehensive understanding of the potential use cases for our software.
We currently have 110 monthly active users on JusticeText, and attorneys have uploaded 1,000+ hours of discovery to the platform. We have been extremely intentional about driving user engagement through onboarding sessions, personalized outreach, and customer support. We recently secured a $160K annual contract with the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission and will be onboarding 125 lawyers across the state onto JusticeText next month.
Our primary goal is to focus on scaling our solution nationwide and deepening our existing partnerships with offices like the Georgia Justice Project, Orange County Public Defender, and Kansas Federal Public Defender.
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Devshi Mehrotra
If you have additional video content that explains your solution, provide a YouTube or Vimeo link here:
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new application of an existing technologyWhat makes your solution innovative?
Today, public defense is in crisis. Defenders are systematically overworked, underfunded, and disadvantaged relative to the prosecution. Innovation often brings with it the promise of change, but in a criminal justice system riddled with inequities, technology often only entrenches the problems of over-policing and poor representation of the indigent. Here public defense is no exception.
Consider the recent explosion of digital discovery: technology has made reams of information available as novel forms of evidence. From forensic discovery to body-worn cameras, prosecution and defense counsel alike are adjusting to new technological realities. The difference: law enforcement and prosecution possess structural advantages in the form of significant public funding and far-reaching legal discretion.
The relative disadvantages of public defenders have culminated in a “tech gap” that contravenes the principles of equal justice. Prosecution has greater legal powers, including warrants and court orders, to compel companies to grant them access to digital evidence, and they can utilize forensics technologies to assist with digital investigations. Additionally, markets offering access to password-protected smartphones and computers cater almost exclusively to law enforcement. Technology has all but tilted the scales of justice.
At JusticeText, we believe defenders deserve to utilize technology to its fullest extent for their indigent clients. 92% of the 109 public defenders we surveyed indicated that they utilize an entirely manual process to review audiovisual evidence. We have developed a new product that levels the playing field by leveraging machine learning to convert digital discovery into a text-based representation.
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
Select the key characteristics of your target population.
In which states / US territories will you be operating within the next year?
In which states / US territories do you currently operate?
How many people does your solution currently serve? How many will it serve in one year? In five years?
We currently serve 500 indigent defense attorneys who represent 270,000 individuals annually across 8 states. Within one year, we would like to grow 500% and serve 2,500 indigent defense attorneys and an estimated 1.35 million criminal defendants. Our five-year goal is to work with all 15,000 indigent defense attorneys in the United States and ensure expedited, improved outcomes for the 5.6 million low-income individuals who are charged with a crime every year.
How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?
According to the national standards set by the Justice Policy Institute, only 21% of county-based public defender offices have enough attorneys to effectively handle their caseloads. As a direct consequence of the high volumes of indigent defender caseloads, individual public defenders are often obligated to assume responsibility for far more clients than they can be reasonably expected to protect.
We have identified five key impact metrics which reflect the core value proposition of JusticeText. We ask attorneys to reflect on the first four statements in our end-of-pilot survey and will include the fifth question 6 months down the road.
- Using JusticeText helps me be more effective at my job.
- Using JusticeText helps save me time.
- Using JusticeText helps me feel more prepared to accurately advise clients about the strength of the case against them.
- Using JusticeText helps strengthen my ability to get better plea offers because of my familiarity with the evidence.
- Using JusticeText increases my ability to state “ready for trial” on the first trial date.
Through our product, we intend to reduce the amount of time that is wastefully spent in processing video evidence to strengthen the capacity of our courts to deliver just legal representation. We will be utilizing our pilot studies to better quantify how JusticeText improves justice outcomes.
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
How many people work on your solution team?
My co-founder Leslie and I lived in Chicago during the age of an unprecedented wave of majority-black school closures, of the murder of Laquan McDonald, and of the relentless expansion of the second largest municipal police department in the country. While navigating the city through the lens of computer scientists, we realized the extent to which the set of priorities driving technological development fail to be inclusive of the most marginalized communities. It was then that we made a commitment to leverage our technical backgrounds in furtherance of racial justice efforts in the city we had grown to care so deeply for.
Leslie and I, as a Black man and South Asian woman, are both young, underrepresented members of the technology community who actively seek to advance racial justice through our work. I believe we have the opportunity to showcase the potential for technology and innovation to alleviate inequalities rather than exacerbate them.
We have previously cultivated extensive experience as software engineers at organizations like Google Brain, Facebook, Microsoft Research, Stanford Law, and DeepMind. As a highly technical co-founding team, we have been able to rapidly execute on our product vision over the past two years. We were also most recently named to the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 List for Social Impact.
Devshi Mehrotra, CEO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/de...
Leslie Jones-Dove, CTO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/le...
We have 2 full-time employees, 2 contractors, and 5 interns currently working on JusticeText.
How long have you been working on your solution?
2
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
My co-founder Leslie and I lived in Chicago during the age of an unprecedented wave of majority-black school closures, of the murder of Laquan McDonald, and of the relentless expansion of the second largest municipal police department in the country. While navigating the city through the lens of computer scientists, we realized the extent to which the set of priorities driving technological development fail to be inclusive of the most marginalized communities. It was then that we made a commitment to leverage our technical backgrounds in furtherance of racial justice efforts in the city we had grown to care so deeply for.
Leslie and I, as a Black man and South Asian woman, are both young, underrepresented members of the technology community who actively seek to advance racial justice through our work. I believe we have the opportunity to showcase the potential for technology and innovation to alleviate inequalities rather than exacerbate them.
We have previously cultivated extensive experience as software engineers at organizations like Google Brain, Facebook, Microsoft Research, Stanford Law, and DeepMind. As a highly technical co-founding team, we have been able to rapidly execute on our product vision over the past two years. We were also most recently named to the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 List for Social Impact.
Devshi Mehrotra, CEO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/de...
Leslie Jones-Dove, CTO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/le...
What is your approach to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership team?
Leslie and I fundamentally believe in the importance of recruiting talent from underrepresented communities as we continue to scale JusticeText, especially given our own identities and backgrounds. Specifically, we intend to ensure that at least 50% of our team consists of racial minorities and that our engineering team that is at least 40% female and non-binary. I would also like to partner with those who have a lived experience of the criminal justice system in building our Board of Advisors.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Government (B2G)Why are you applying to Solve?
I am deeply inspired by MIT Solve’s core mission to build technology for communities that have previously been overlooked by the innovation ecosystem. My personal vision for the future of technology is to build an industry that actively aligns itself with causes centered on racial and economic justice. I am not content with innovating within the confines of ivory towers; I wish to transform computer science into a vehicle for activism, one which is inclusive of the needs of all facets of society.
The set of priorities that drive technological research and innovation today are not inclusive of the challenges facing large parts of society, especially not racial minorities and low-income communities. It is thus all the more amazing to see the impact MIT Solve alumni have been able to scale to advance education equity, financial inclusion, and climate justice.
I would love to leverage the MIT Solve community’s resources in the following ways:
- We plan to officially launch JusticeText in summer 2021. Our target is to secure 3 government contracts and 150 paid private criminal defense attorney customers within 3 months of launch. MIT Solve’s network could be invaluable in helping us gain media exposure and connect with criminal justice reform advocates across Massachusetts.
- We would love to source engineering talent from the MIT student community, especially for academic-year internship opportunities.
- We would greatly benefit from connecting with NLP experts at MIT who might be interested in advising us on our machine learning product roadmap.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Please explain in more detail here.
We are currently focused on executing on our go-to-market strategy and could greatly benefit from mentorship around public relations and product distribution.
What organizations would you like to partner with, and how would you like to partner with them?
The Educational Justice Institute at MIT - TEJI has done great work in engaging local communities of criminal justice advocates and supporting re-entry for formerly incarcerated individuals. They might be able to help us connect with indigent defense attorneys and legal aid groups in Boston.
MIT NLP Group - It would be great to connect with faculty members with a research interest in ASR for low-resource languages or legal NLP, especially as we thinking about building an advisory board.
Karen Hao, MIT Technology Review - She has previously reported on the misuse of technology within the criminal justice system, and I would love to see if there are any opportunities for the Technology Review to feature our work.
MIT GOV/LAB - The GOV/LAB has led incredible research projects that assess the efficacy of public-interest technology. They might be able to help us connect with relevant stakeholders in government and potentially develop a more sophisticated impact framework for JusticeText.
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The ASA Prize for Equitable Education? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The Elevate Prize for Antiracist Technology? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The Elevate Prize for Antiracist Technology to advance your solution?
During my time living in Chicago, I began to understand the social apparatus by which poverty in America is criminalized and then punished. Living in a city where 90 percent of police use of force incidents are against communities of color, it became clear to me that the effects of Chicago’s residential segregation extended far beyond zip code alone.
Over the past year and a half, my co-founder and I built an audiovisual evidence management software that generates automated transcripts of body camera footage, interrogation videos, jail calls, and more. We apply natural language processing algorithms to automatically identify key parts of the transcript and enable attorneys to easily generate video clips in preparation for trial.
We have worked in direct collaboration with public defenders since day one of building our product and are piloted the software with public defense agencies in Houston, Cincinnati, Washington D.C., Queens, and more — which collectively serve 2.2 million low-income Americans.
As technologists of color, our work is grounded in both a sociological and historical appreciation for the complexities of the American criminal justice system—with its gaping faults and inequality but also its capacity for reform. In building JusticeText, we are committed to strengthening the capacity of our public institutions to ensure criminal legal representation for all Americans, regardless of income.
Receiving the Elevate Prize for Antiracist Technology would be transformational. The funding would allow us to hire an additional engineer to execute on our product priorities and expand to 2 additional states.
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The GM Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The GM Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion to advance your solution?
During my time living in Chicago, I began to understand the social apparatus by which poverty in America is criminalized and then punished. Living in a city where 90 percent of police use of force incidents are against communities of color, it became clear to me that the effects of Chicago’s residential segregation extended far beyond zip code alone.
Over the past year and a half, my co-founder and I built an audiovisual evidence management software that generates automated transcripts of body camera footage, interrogation videos, jail calls, and more. We apply natural language processing algorithms to automatically identify key parts of the transcript and enable attorneys to easily generate video clips in preparation for trial.
We have worked in direct collaboration with public defenders since day one of building our product and are piloted the software with public defense agencies in Houston, Cincinnati, Washington D.C., Queens, and more — which collectively serve 2.2 million low-income Americans.
As technologists of color, our work is grounded in both a sociological and historical appreciation for the complexities of the American criminal justice system—with its gaping faults and inequality but also its capacity for reform. In building JusticeText, we are committed to strengthening the capacity of our public institutions to ensure criminal legal representation for all Americans, regardless of income.
Receiving the GM Prize would be transformational. The funding would allow us to hire an additional engineer to execute on our product priorities and expand to 2 additional states.
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The HP Prize for Advancing Digital Equity? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The HP Prize for Advancing Digital Equity to advance your solution?
During my time living in Chicago, I began to understand the social apparatus by which poverty in America is criminalized and then punished. Living in a city where 90 percent of police use of force incidents are against communities of color, it became clear to me that the effects of Chicago’s residential segregation extended far beyond zip code alone.
Over the past year and a half, my co-founder and I built an audiovisual evidence management software that generates automated transcripts of body camera footage, interrogation videos, jail calls, and more. We apply natural language processing algorithms to automatically identify key parts of the transcript and enable attorneys to easily generate video clips in preparation for trial.
We have worked in direct collaboration with public defenders since day one of building our product and are piloted the software with public defense agencies in Houston, Cincinnati, Washington D.C., Queens, and more — which collectively serve 2.2 million low-income Americans.
As technologists of color, our work is grounded in both a sociological and historical appreciation for the complexities of the American criminal justice system—with its gaping faults and inequality but also its capacity for reform. In building JusticeText, we are committed to strengthening the capacity of our public institutions to ensure criminal legal representation for all Americans, regardless of income.
Receiving the HP Prize would be transformational. The funding would allow us to hire an additional engineer to execute on our product priorities and expand to 2 additional states.
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for the Innovation for Women Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use the Innovation for Women Prize to advance your solution?
During my time living in Chicago, I began to understand the social apparatus by which poverty in America is criminalized and then punished. Living in a city where 90 percent of police use of force incidents are against communities of color, it became clear to me that the effects of Chicago’s residential segregation extended far beyond zip code alone.
Over the past year and a half, my co-founder and I built an audiovisual evidence management software that generates automated transcripts of body camera footage, interrogation videos, jail calls, and more. We apply natural language processing algorithms to automatically identify key parts of the transcript and enable attorneys to easily generate video clips in preparation for trial.
We have worked in direct collaboration with public defenders since day one of building our product and are piloted the software with public defense agencies in Houston, Cincinnati, Washington D.C., Queens, and more — which collectively serve 2.2 million low-income Americans.
As technologists of color, our work is grounded in both a sociological and historical appreciation for the complexities of the American criminal justice system—with its gaping faults and inequality but also its capacity for reform. In building JusticeText, we are committed to strengthening the capacity of our public institutions to ensure criminal legal representation for all Americans, regardless of income.
Receiving the Innovation for Women would be transformational. The funding would allow us to hire an additional engineer to execute on our product priorities and expand to 2 additional states.
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The AI for Humanity Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The AI for Humanity Prize to advance your solution?
During my time living in Chicago, I began to understand the social apparatus by which poverty in America is criminalized and then punished. Living in a city where 90 percent of police use of force incidents are against communities of color, it became clear to me that the effects of Chicago’s residential segregation extended far beyond zip code alone.
Over the past year and a half, my co-founder and I built an audiovisual evidence management software that generates automated transcripts of body camera footage, interrogation videos, jail calls, and more. We apply natural language processing algorithms to automatically identify key parts of the transcript and enable attorneys to easily generate video clips in preparation for trial.
We have worked in direct collaboration with public defenders since day one of building our product and are piloted the software with public defense agencies in Houston, Cincinnati, Washington D.C., Queens, and more — which collectively serve 2.2 million low-income Americans.
As technologists of color, our work is grounded in both a sociological and historical appreciation for the complexities of the American criminal justice system—with its gaping faults and inequality but also its capacity for reform. In building JusticeText, we are committed to strengthening the capacity of our public institutions to ensure criminal legal representation for all Americans, regardless of income.
Receiving the AI for Humanity Prize would be transformational. The funding would allow us to hire an additional engineer to execute on our product priorities and expand to 2 additional states.
Solution Team
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Devshi Mehrotra CEO and Co-Founder, JusticeText
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Solution Name:
JusticeText