The Justice Tech Download: a risk assessment simulation, phone tracking, job postings
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For our course at Georgetown Law, Keith Porcaro and I build simulations to help our students better understand technology's ripple effect through the criminal justice system. Last fall, we unveiled Detain/Release, a sim that helps us teach pre-trial risk assessment tools by putting students in the judge's seat at a bail hearing. We are making this tool available to professors, researchers and practitioners. (Medium)
We are also happy to announce that our project JusticeTech.info won a Le Hackie award last week for top ten legal hack of 2018. The project is a growing catalog of criminal justice technologies and data projects. If you're working on something that isn't listed, let us know. (DC Legal Hackers)
Last week was CES, the big, annual consumer electronics show. While there wasn't much in the way of criminal justice tech, a GPS tracker with a panic button for kids caught my eye. Without a doubt there's a public safety element here, but parents will also be able to geofence their kids and receive automated emails when their child makes it to a friends house after school. (Wired, near the bottom)
Regardless of what phone carriers said last year (Ars), they are still tracking you and helping others do the same. For $300, you can get a bounty hunter to find someone's phone thanks to AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. (Motherboard) Since this revelation, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D.-OR.) says he is bringing back legislation to make the practice illegal. (Twitter)
After two consumer drones shutdown air traffic at the UK's Gatwick airport during the holidays, police were handed new powers to land, seize and search drones flown in a now extended exclusion zone around airports. (Guardian)
Event
On Friday, Feb. 8 from 8:30am to 4:00pm, the Center for Access to Justice at Georgia State University will host its second annual State of the South conference, which brings together scholars and practitioners discussing how technology is affecting criminal and civil legal issues. I'll be there on a stellar panel of experts and lawyers. You'll need to register. Be quick though, the deadline is approaching. (GSU)
Jobs
The Lab at D.C. works with District agencies to design and study policy and program interventions, and they're hiring. There's three postings at the moment, including a data scientist, social scientist and operations analyst. This office does cool work, including the first randomized control trial of a police body cam rollout. (The Lab)