First Internship at Recidiviz

FEBRUARY 2023, SAN FRANCISCO

BACKGROUND

Recidiviz is a non-profit that partners with state criminal justice agencies to advance their use of data and reduce incarceration. I interned for Recidiviz for the first time in February of 2023.

I was given the task to conduct research on the U.S. criminal sentencing system and make recommendations for where Rediciviz could potentially intervene to make sentences more equitable.

OUTCOMES

I wrote a literature review, interviewed a dozen lawyers, judges, and court clerks around the country, developed recommendations, and did a mini design sprint to help prosecutors consider alternative sentences to prison time.

Highlighted points of interest from lit review

Insights about court clerks, one of the courtroom actors involved in sentencing

Design Sprint (see further breakdown in Process section)

Page from Prosecutor Alternative Sentencing Tool wireframe

This is a Figma flow diagram for a Prosecutor Diversion tool. It encourages prosecutors to consider requesting alternatives to jail time for defendants. Click anywhere on the prototype to highlight interactive elements in blue.

IMPACT

When I returned to Recidiviz a year and a half later, this month-long research project had transformed into a full team developing a new tool.

Based on my recommendation against targeting court clerks due to their limited influence — which had been their initial area of focus — they instead decided to make a tool for pre-sentence investigators, who write a report about the convicted person that is read by the judge during sentencing and has a much larger impact.

I was able to speak with the PM for the team and she told me how she had read through all of my research when starting the project and how helpful it had been. I was honored that I had contributed to the creation of this amazing new tool.

PROCESS

Click on the images below to enlarge them. Click on the "X” in the top right corner to close out of them.

Interviewing

Defining the scope of the project

Generating research questions

Notes from an interview

Design sprint

Asking "How Might We?" questions for courtroom actors

Creating a user persona for prosecutors

Brainstorming solutions to the HMWs above

Flow sketches

Prototyping the prosecutor diversion tool

Chosen idea: a website that allows prosecutors to compare the outcomes (such as recidivism rate) of jail time vs. a diversion program for a given charge

Homepage

The website can point out alternatives to jail time that the prosecutor may not have been aware of

This screen shows how the probability of various outcomes for a given individual would change depending on the amount of time served. This would be based on historical data for similar offenders with the same charges