Second Chances and Empathy Hackathon

PROJECT CONTEXT

Across the country, dozens of states have enacted “second chance” legislation, designed to help Americans with criminal records to shorten or downgrade their past convictions, clean their criminal records, and/or regain the right to vote. In theory, the second chance legislation would remove barriers to work and unlock opportunity for tens of millions of Americans. However, while new laws have expanded the bases for clearance, research by  Professor Colleen Chien documents that only a small fraction of those eligible for relief have received it.

HACKATHON DETAILS

We’ll have a 12-hour hackathon that will bring together advocates, public servants, students, and experts in tech and law to work on developing technologically-driven strategies to bring records clearance to scale. In teams of 2-4 people, we’ll provide instructions and mentorship to help you develop tools to automate records clearance (aka removal of record history from one's public record) using publicly available court records, in partnership with Yolo and other CA counties, Uncommon Law, #cut50 and other groups. We'll develop algorithms to parse records and apply the criteria to clear records. Your team will present your work and lessons learned to a team of judges.

WHY ATTEND

• Learn new skills

• Highlight a new skill and project on your resume

• Receive mentorship from industry Software Engineers & Data Scientists

• Social impact of your work!

SCHEDULE

October 27, 2018

9am - 9:45am: breakfast and keynote speaker

9:45am - 12pm: form teams and begin hacking

12pm - 1pm: lunch

1pm - 6pm: continue hacking

6pm - 6:30pm: judges review

6:30pm - 8:15pm: Dinner & a Movie; Screening of "The Return" and conversation with the director, Katie Galloway, and star, Bilal Chatman (John Oliver segment)

8:15pm - 9pm: top selected teams present publicly and awards

BRING YOUR COMPUTER, LEAVE WITH NEW SKILLS AND FRIENDS!

JUDGES

• Han Zhang, Senior Data Scientist at Tesla
• Emily Miller, Data Scientist at DrivenData
• Venkatesh Ravichandran, Senior Manager, Data Science at Intuit
• Daniel Trapanier, Program Director of MS in Business Analytics at Santa Clara University
• Joseph B. Rickert, R Consortium Director and RStudio R Community Ambassador
• Judge Peter Manoukian, Superior Court of Santa Clara County

POST HACKATHON

If you’re interested in continuing with the project, we’ll share opportunities to do so.

A $20 donation will be requested from attendants working in the private sector. Proceeds will be donated to Uncommon Law, a nonprofit focused on transforming the lives of people overlooked by society. 

Interested in sponsoring? Want more infromation? Contact Colleen (cchien@scu.edu) or Laura (lnorris@scu.edu).

This event is proudly sponsored by