Expunge.io for SF (or elsewhere?)

[lippytak]

Expunge.io is a project by @cathydeng to make juvenile expungement understandable in IL. We should fork it (the code and the process) for SF. For more background on the project, see episode 5 of http://civiccast.us/ (tangent feature request for @jden: Episode permalinks)

Looks like the SF Public Defender is already working pretty hard on this exact issue: http://sfpublicdefender.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/clean_slate_application.pdf

Potential partners

• Legal stuff: Fresh Start Law Center or a public defender
• Youth stuff/user stuff/community engagement: ?

First step is to do some research and answer some basic questions:

• How many juvenile arrests annually in SF?
• About how many are expunged now?
• About how many are eligible?
• What's the main bottleneck? Awareness? Getting rap sheet? The expungement process itself?

[junosuarez]

@lippytak thanks for the tangent! Could you please open an issue on https://github.com/civiccast/civicast.github.io/issues ?

[cathydeng]

it'd be worthwhile to research adult expungement, too - clean slate looks like it's for adult records, which is awesome. in IL, we focused on juvenile arrests b/c eligibility for adult expungement is pretty strict whereas most juvenile arrests are eligible. but that's not the case everywhere - MD recently made http://www.expungemaryland.org/ for adult expungement.

if this gets going, I'd be happy to share more about what I learned while workin on expunge.io

[jtashea]

Hi All. I was half of the team that took Cathy's expunge.io to make expungeMaryland. We did both juvenile sealing and adult expungement.

The biggest thing, after deciding scope, was to breakdown the statute into a digestible and useable way. We made a flowchart as our roadmap, and it changed a number of times before we even got into coding it. We've got a bunch of "lessons learned" to share in our process of scaling expunge.io to multiple jurisdictions and also creating positive outcomes for those that are legally precluded from expungement.

Jon and I are also in the preliminary process of developing a similar app for the DC Bar Association. They're wanting some new features like auto-fill filings. We're also hoping to scrape the courts website to nudge people towards using the program to increase effectiveness and impact.

Anyhow, I'm always happy to talk about Cathy's great idea. Feel free to reach out to either myself or Jon (@legalcodes).

[lippytak]

@jtashea that's awesome (and so sad it's that complex) - and thanks for the generous offer! We'll be in touch if we start working on this.

[fureigh]

cc @nikzei, @jennymt JFYI