This document will onboard you to the project and help you become productive as quickly as possible.
This project originated with the 2019 National Day of Civic Hacking (NDoCH). Code for America (CfA) Brigades across the country decided through their coordinating body, the National Advisory Council, to focus on a single topic area: justice equity and record clearance. Each Brigade was asked to do one of three activities: create a Know Your Rights website (a.k.a. KYR site), document a journey map for a local expungement clinic, or create a usability scorecard for local expungement services.
HfLA decided to take on two of those deliverables. We visited an expungement clinic and created a journey map. However, we saw that as an input to the Know Your Rights Site project.
This subject naturally drew Hack for LA into collaboration with other Brigades and Code for America itself, both for the sake of collaboration and to avoid conflicting or redundant efforts.
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CfA -- This subject area has long been a focus at Code for America, where the Record Clearance team has been building technology tools to help District Attorneys carry out new laws around record clearance. “What tools do DAs have now?MF”
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Other CA Brigades -- most laws regarding the rights of people with criminal records are passed at the state level, either through the legislative process or through ballot propositions. Hence, a KYR site would apply equally to citizens in Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, etc. “Announce expungement asap to state residents. (What about people who have moved?),MF”
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(Note that there are significant regional differences when we get into the expungement process, which is executed at the county level and depends heavily on each District Attorney.) “Identify District Attorney in each county, MF.”
So far we have had two introductory/background interviews with members of the CfA Record Clearance team. Notes from both conversations are in this document, Must read.
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Alia Toran-Burrell, Sr. Program Manager
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Aditi Joshi, UX Lead
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Add yourself to our team roster.
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CfA Slack channel -- #ca-know-your-rights (The CfA Slack is a different Slack org, so you need to join it separately from your Brigade Slack org by filling out this form.) Google Drive
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HfLA slack channel -- #record-clearance
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The UX Research folder in our Drive has some really powerful documents that will help you quickly understand the meaning and impact this project aims to address.
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Clear My Record Applicant Personas by Code for America -- a distillation of 29 interviews with applicants, and 1 year of applicant support online and in person.
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Verbatim quotes from clinic attendees about their experiences and feelings
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Demographic data view (infographic-style!) of clinic attendees we met
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Personas based on clinic attendees
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Personas we’ve started crafting for a KYR site
Our primary research document, started at NDoCH. Provides an overview of existing websites that provide info on rights and expungement, as well as specific laws regarding record clearance and charge reduction like Prop 47 and Prop 64.
Some research into recent laws requiring county governments to automatically clear or reduce records is also present in this personas doc. (AB1793 and AB1076)
The CfA Record Clearance team has provided some excellent examples from other states. Assets shared by Aditi are in this folder, and see her email for more online resources.