 A little background I'd like to give with primarily some aspects of the criminal justice system in the United States, right? So we spend more to incarcerate somebody per year than room board and tuition at a public university. We spend an aggregate over $80 billion just in direct cost to the United States. Those costs are dwarfed by costs of society, right? So costs like loss earnings, adverse health effects, damage to the families of incarcerated. And then on top of that, we have more than 4,000 companies profiting off the prison industrial complex, right? Profiting off of things like, with things like predatory pricing, prison labor, the private prison industry. And for all of this, after three years, more than half of all incarcerated individuals that are released from prison end up back inside, right? So we send a tremendous amount of money. The system clearly doesn't work very well. Today, we're going to talk about a different way of doing business in this space, one that supports innovative entrepreneurs who want to revolutionize this space and address the injustices that exist here. Rather than capitalizing on perpetuating a bad system, these companies are trying to ethically disrupt the existing criminal legal system with solutions that either scale good policy or disrupt bad policy. And so I'm going to jump right in, introduce the panel, and get into some good discussions here. So first we have Ronald Lentz. Ronald's the program director of the Justice Accelerator at the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law. He manages start-ups and support programs across West Africa, East Africa, and the MENA region that have supported more than 170 start-ups that prevent and resolve justice issues. Next, Doella Sudbury. Doella is the CEO and founder of RASA Legal. RASA is on a mission to make expungement as affordable and accessible as possible. RASA uses technology to streamline the expungement process and provides low-cost legal services for individuals looking to unlock a better future. Doella is also a licensed lawyer in Utah and has over a decade of criminal law, policy, and data-driven justice reform experience. Next, Jelani Anglin. He's the CEO and co-founder of Good Call Technologies. Their mission is to dismantle the system of mass incarceration by creating better access to legal support. By nature, Jelani is a community organizer and a serial entrepreneur. And while organizing in low-income communities across the East Coast, Jelani experienced firsthand some of the pitfalls that exist for those oppressed by the existing system. And Eunice Olapade. Eunice currently leads the team at Side Brief, where she is enabling the rise of entrepreneurs in emerging markets. She's a visionary social entrepreneur and an advocate for justice, innovation, and technology. She has a deep passion for creating positive societal impact, and Eunice has been at the forefront of leveraging technology to address systemic challenges, disrupting the status quo, and pave the way for a more just and equitable society. So if everyone could give this awesome panel a hand, we'll have time. So justice tech, the second half of that term, technology. That's OK. That is a good ring, though. The second half of justice tech, technology. What is the importance of technology, and how can it be utilized in this space, and why is it so critical for us to think about? Yeah, thank you, Chris. And I'm really excited to be with all of you on the panel. We have a global panel, but I'm going to be speaking from the American perspective. Tech is absolutely critical to solving some of the issues in our criminal justice system right now. I will give you an example based on our experience at RASA. So as Chris mentioned, RASA is focused on the issue of criminal records. Unfortunately, having a criminal record is extremely common. One in three Americans have some type of record. That's a misdemeanor or felony level record. And that represents 70 to 100 million Americans. Even old and minor records can prevent somebody from getting a job, from getting housing, from going back to school, from volunteering in their child's school. Just the number of barriers a person with a record has is unreal. Unfortunately, criminal records are digital. They're permanent. The government is the opposite of tech enabled. And it's really, really difficult for someone with a criminal record to get it cleared. Most people find that they need a lawyer to help them through the process. Most people will never be able to afford the two to 5,000, sometimes more that lawyers will charge for this service. And so what we're trying to do at RASA is make that process simple, make it user-friendly, make it affordable, make it accessible to people. And technology is really, really key to this. And to give you a sense of just how it can change the scale and what the outcomes can be of using technology, I live in the state of Utah. Our statewide legal aid organization can serve 400 people with criminal records every year. A drop in the bucket when you consider that in the state of Utah there's over 800,000 people with records. At RASA, we have built technology to make it simple for somebody to determine if they're eligible. In under three minutes, somebody can come to our website, type in their name and date of birth, and determine whether they're eligible for expungement now or in the future. Very, very easy to do. Our software is powered by court records themselves, which was an ask by justice-impacted people. A lot of people said, I don't remember what's on my record. I don't know how to get my records. Don't ask me how many misdemeanors or felonies that I have. I don't remember. I don't know how to get that information. It's just really easy to give up. So we launched our software about a year ago. In our first year, we've been able to serve over 10,000 people. And so to go from 400 to 10,000, thank you, is a really incredible thing. And it's not possible without tech. That's right. Yeah, and we see technology allowing that kind of scale all over the place. Anybody else have any interesting? Yes. I mean, I think technology generally, there's a lot of processes, justice processes, that is re-dued by bureaucracy, right? So justice processes, in general, are re-dued by paperwork bureaucracy. And technology just helps make that better. It makes it faster, easier, it makes it more accessible, and user-friendly, really, on a broad level. Yeah, and I mean, it's quite surprising how, as you said, the government can be the opposite of tech enabled in a lot of places, and particularly around the justice system. It's fascinating. Jelani, let me ask you a question. So when investors are looking to make investments in the justice tech space, what should they be looking for in founders? And what kind of characteristics should we be aware of that are typical of, not typical of, but are common in the justice tech space? Yeah, and I know we spoke about these questions, but my answer always changes when I think about this. Because just being at SoCAP, I've had conversations with investors and explaining to them about the justice tech space and how I am as a founder and how I came about coming up with this idea speaks to what folks should be thinking about in justice tech. And I say that because there's characteristics that you see in a founder, for example, in the regular tech world everybody's talking about, making sure you have product market fit, right? Making sure that you have that. In the justice tech space, I think about, what does it mean to build for communities that are affected? And product market fit, going a step further, we have the actual communities that are affected helping us build the product. They're involved with building their product. They're integrated. We're serving that demographic because they're actually the ones that are helping build this. Another thing is also thinking about whether folks are able to understand the problem with a passion. A problem is something that you wanna solve, but having the passion to actually solve the problem is very difficult to maintain. When you're going through fundraising meetings, when you're saying that there's some legislation that changes how you're gonna work, all of these things really can change how you operate a business. But if you have the passion to keep going, that's something that really matters. Another characteristic that I'll say that's unique to the justice tech space is you gotta be able to fight. And that's not New York in me. And I'm gonna be real. The reason why I say that is because the criminal legal system was built like this. It was built not to serve people of color. It was built to oppress people. And now we're trying to create companies that is disrupting that. Do you really think that this system is going to allow that? There's laws that are created. There's legislators that are working to obfuscate that whole plan. And if you're creating a tech product to actually disrupt this system, you have to be willing to fight. You have to be able to pivot. If there's some type of new legislation that affects how your business operates or there's some type of rev tape that you're dealing with that hinders your expansion, how are you as a founder gonna handle that? And I'll say as my journey, in my journey, I've realized this a lot. What we do is we run an emergency or a support hotline connecting folks to legal support. Now imagine, if you're able to pick up a phone and just like you're able to dial 911, imagine being able to contact a lawyer. That would be huge. One of the reasons why folks are brought through this system is because only 1% of individuals have access to a lawyer at that point of arrest. So what we see is many folks are coarsen to sign the statements under duress. They end up losing their freedom because they did not know what to do at that point in time. And the system is designed that way. After what people can afford a lawyer, but it's not the same for individuals that don't have the resources. And because the system is set up and designed that way, we have to figure out how do we build technology that even when the system is working against our communities, our communities are still able to stand up and fight. So that also means that, pairing technology with this passion, pairing technology with stakeholders that also know how to fight and know how to do this work is important. So yeah, definitely those characteristics. I think one last characteristic that is important is empathy. I was arrested at 16 years old for a minor infraction. I've also struggled with mental health resources, mental health issues through the years. And I've realized that these services that weren't around to help me also was the reason why I ended up in the system in the first place at times. And there's so many people that are going through the system and it's their worst day. How are you gonna be able to create some type of technology that's serving this person in that time and afterwards when they went through one of the worst moments of their life? The justice system scars folks. So being a founder, you have to be empathetic to those things and being able to create a product that feels empathetic to one's feelings and experiences, yeah. That's great, that's great. I will sort of pile on your, the system is working exactly as it's designed, comment, some evidence that I was looking at recently was the incarceration rates in this country are more highly correlated to poverty rates than they are to crime rates, right? So the states with the highest crime rates aren't the states with the highest incarceration rates. It's the states with the highest poverty rates that are. More examples of how the system is working is designed, right? So this is a small space, the justice tech space still. We've got lots of interesting companies coming up in there, but Ronald, what needs to happen to make this mainstream to attract more innovative entrepreneurs like Jelani and O'Allah to attract more mission-driven investors to come in? Yeah, I mean, it's a key question. Maybe it's also good to know I bring in more of a non-U.S. perspective from Holland. We work with governments in different African countries and then the Middle East to run big access to justice programs. And part of what we do is we work with the justice tech communities in those countries. We run accelerators. We also set up a small impact investment fund for this. I think maybe let's start with sort of understanding, I think with justice tech, we're at the stage where maybe climate tech was 10, 15 years ago, very early stage. So we're kind of in a demonstration phase. We need to demonstrate the actual potential of justice tech, I think, to not just investors, but I would say to policy makers, to justice practitioners, and I would say to the entrepreneurship community itself. So as we're building the ecosystem, there's four aspects I think are interesting to consider. One is we need really good data, really good justice data, so we really understand what are the biggest problems and what are the actual details of those problems. And we need to know what works well, not just what doesn't work, what are best practices in the justice sector that work well, so you can build on top of them. And also share these resources. Second is we need to make sure innovations actually scale. Means we need great incubators, accelerators, innovation prices, like we saw yesterday with dream.org. So there's a credible pipeline of investable companies because if that is not clear for investors, they're a little apprehensive. In the meantime, there need to be more impact investment funds justice tech like yours. But they, I think they need to focus on the early stage. Just before they are ready enough to run a series A, that missing middle part, which means catalytic capital. I mean, this morning there was really a great panel already on the importance of venture philanthropy to get into that space. Enabling environment, you really need to make sure there's policies and regulations in place that not just support new justice tech innovations, but stop blocking them. Because not just entrepreneurs will not go into the space, but also investors will be like red flag, not getting in here. And maybe the fourth one is to create a bit of a movement. I mean, great organizations here in the US and entrepreneurs here, we have our own ecosystem in Europe and in Africa in the Middle East, but let's have a common language of what justice tech is, classifications, standards on how to measure impact so investors can compare actually different investments. I think it's critical and we need to get all of these stakeholders more into the same room. Often public sector doesn't even know what to ask for to the, let's say, startup community and vice versa. So just to name a couple of aspects. Excellent. Yeah. Chris, can I add something to that? So I think that's a great list as you can hear many things need to happen to have success in the justice tech space. Another thing I would add to that list is data unification and standardization. The justice system is very complex and all of that data lives sometimes in municipal court systems that are not unified with other systems and from the perspective of a justice impacted person, that's really hard, but it's also really difficult for an entrepreneur that's trying to look at the whole picture of someone's record. And I remember when I started San Juan County had its own little special forms that they wanted us to use San Juan County as tiny, tiny. That's really hard to automate when you have these little places saying, well, we don't want to use this data-proof forms. We want you to use these special forms. And when you're trying to build a technology solution that creates a lot of challenges because it's just a lot of different forms that then you're gonna have to build document automation for. That's expensive. It's time consuming and it doesn't work. So we also need to update the government. People need to approach these issues in a unified way across states. The Filing Fairness Project at Stanford, I think is a great example. The work they're doing there is six states are actually now in conversations about this very issue. Can we agree to collect data the same way? For all of these different actions, eviction or criminal record expungement, can we agree on the same forms? And if we can start to think about these problems as going across state lines and agree upon forms, data, collection standards, unification practices that lay that groundwork for scalable solutions, I would like to see more conversation about that. That's great. You're about to add something to that too. Oh, no, I think they're pretty much coveted. I think one of them just like to emphasize on this point around incubators, accelerators, they're different fields. There's fintech, there's now climate tech, and they're like accelerators and incubators that are designed for entrepreneurs like that. So if we see more of that in the justice space, it would encourage entrepreneurs to do a lot more and impact society. Yeah, I think that's a really key piece. I wanted to piggyback off of that as well. I think it's also creating space. One of the things that isn't given, since this is such a new space, we have to have time and space to actually prove some of these hypotheses that we have. I feel like not understanding that there's impact tied to this space, it's not just about financial returns, it's about proving that you're making an impact and that takes time. That also takes money. That makes, on top of an investment, finding a research partner to work with to make sure they can prove out the outcomes of this is important. So I think that when we're talking about funding all of these justice tech initiatives, it also has to look like a collaborative approach with not just the funder, but a research partner, maybe a philanthropic partner and also the local government to actually get in there and roll up their sleeves. The collaborative approach will actually be something that will be fruitful in the long run. Exactly, exactly. Gonna maybe add one thing to this. Wouldn't it be great if also there was an explicit shared ambition, right? For instance, let's decrease, re-arrest by 50% in three years in the city of San Francisco and have that as a joint ambition and it makes it really clear then how what government does, what private sector does, what civil society does, but it all contributes to the same goal and I think that type of mission thinking is really something that will be great if cities would adopt. Eunice, I'm always spouting off different statistics that I've learned over the years on what's happening in the United States and this is a global issue that we're talking about. What are some of the issues that in developing countries have in common with problems that exist in the US and what are some unique challenges that are faced? Right, so when we talk about justice problem, I mean, in the United States, there's a tendency to go around the mass incarceration, the incarceration subject line, but more in emerging markets and developing countries. It's more from an access point of view. So do we have access to justice, right? Speedy trials is there and some of these can border along socioeconomic ties, political ties and all of that, right? These are also issues that are interwoven with justice issues. So the solutions also a bit different just because the definition of justice rights is very diverse rights, economic justice rights, social justice rights. It can range and the solutions in this area can range from legal aid support from platforms that allows you to connect to lawyers, right? In case management softwares, it really depends, depending on the country, right? Or the markets you're really looking at. Although there's similarities, I mean, across board, but there are also, I mean, nuances in each of these jurisdictions, right? So it really depends, right? There's no one size fits all, but I mean, justice problems are just varying. And I mean, to run out of points, if someone was talking about standardization of what it means across board, that is also, I think, really important, yeah. Well, do you see other items in this, or add anything to that context? Yeah, I think I'm also gonna circle back to the data because if you really understand well what the justice problems are in a country, then that's your evidence where you basically organize your innovation support. And that can be very different in different countries, like in Northern African countries, it's around employment, let justice, unfair dismissal, no benefits, harassment is the biggest issue. But that's different when you're in Kenya or in Nigeria. It seems that we expect schools to do what families don't do and prisons to do what schools don't do. How can we use tech to support parenting so people don't end up in the justice system to begin with? That's a great question. So what are some resources that we could provide on the parenting end that are, so I think this question is, and I wanna be careful about how we're speaking about our justice system, right? Because we just said that this system is built to work against a certain group of people. We cannot attribute the fact that there are one or three black males that will be incarcerated in their lifetime because there's over-policing communities that are communities of color and the data shows that to just being a parenting issue. There's multiple spaces where folks are not people of color and they're given a second chance or a different opportunity and the question is not how can we fix the household? I think that this is, and I'm no offense to whoever asks this question, but I think it's somewhat dismissive to understand that there is a whole system in a complex that's working against a group of people and still saying, well, what can you do in your home about it? Can I add to that a little bit, Chris? I very much appreciate that. I think as I reflect on the question what Jaylani said as well and what some others have said is that for me, this comes back to poverty and I loved what Chris shared about those poverty statistics like how can we help families? How can we help parents? We can give them access to opportunities. We can give them access to healthcare, to jobs, to housing. And I think when I think about criminal records, that's an example, right? People without records are 63% more likely to get a job interview. We know that their wages are gonna go up by 22%, just one year after clearance. We know that if you live with someone with a record, 79% of families living with someone with a record have been denied housing at least once because of the record. And so we've created a system that keeps people in poverty long after their involvement in the justice system. And what that means is that those parents are struggling and they don't have access to money or childcare or transportation. And so how can we expect people to get out of poverty if we don't create a pathway for them to do that? So support low income families and start looking at this as poverty. The criminal justice system just churns people in poverty through a system and it doesn't work and we need to start seeing them as human beings that have health, physical health issues, emotional health issues and being poor. Yeah, and I'm gonna add to that again because I feel like what Noella said is she created, you created a resource because there was nothing for folks that now are trying to exit the system and not return. The endpoint of the system looks like it's chaotic for folks to figure out how to get out, not return, how to actually get back to their lives. But thinking about the entry point of how folks enter the system, many times folks are fighting with one arm behind their back, not having access to legal representation but you're facing a multitude of charges and you're not sure what to do can lead to you voluntarily giving up your freedom because you just didn't know. So this is access to justice piece that really exists where if folks don't have access to the right resources, if they end up in the situation, they don't know what to do. So it's about access. That's great. Maybe just to add on the level of prevention in the country we're working, I mean, we see the data says less than 5% of people actually get a lawyer. Most of them ask a family member, try to help themselves out and there's community justice models in the countries we work in and more than half just swallow the problem and just go and we're talking about Lebanon housing issues, employment issues, neighbor disputes, family issues and what we see is there aren't hardly any resources that simply explain to people, these are your rights and from an outcomes based point of view, just this is your problem, where do you wanna go? How can you take matters into your own hands, maybe start mediation with that neighbor yourself and all of the different things you can do to actually prevent from this, from escalating to get into a court because courts are filled up anyway. Typical backlog across Africa and the Middle East is six years, so maybe also that perspective. This question is very near and dear to my heart so I'll read this one and I wanna very quickly clarify how I would define justice tech companies. And so the question is, justice tech companies also include projects that expand the size and scope and reach of the criminal legal system. Electronic monitoring technologies have been advertised as an innovation to release people from detention and incarceration in the past decade has demonstrated that there are technologies that expand the carceral net beyond prisons and jails into people's homes and decrease the likelihood of rearrest. These tech fixes often fail to reduce the size and scope of the criminal legal system, creating new forms of incarceration, surveillance and oppression. So I agree that with the second half of that, the only thing I completely disagree with is I don't think that those are justice tech companies. They're not advancing justice tech in that form. In my opinion. Again, maybe different folks may have different views but when we look at companies and we evaluate companies for the impact that they have from our lens, a company needs to either reduce the number of people that enter the system, broadly speaking, not just the number of people that are sitting behind bars, need to increase the likelihood of a successful transition out of the system or need to reduce suffering impact to individuals, families and communities while in the system. We spend a lot of time thinking about unintended consequences because very often very well-meaning companies come up with solutions that on the surface look like they are a better outcome, right? But then you have examples of electronic monitoring companies charging the individuals $300 a month for the benefit of getting to wear a big monitor around their ankle, right? So I think a lot of attention needs to be focused on what are the potential for unintended consequences of this business model and what are the full ramifications? But I'd love some other feedback from the group. I agree with everything that you said. I think this also emphasizes the importance of focusing on whatever solution you are, your users, and what they need and our criminal justice system as a whole is not designed to do that. I came to this work as a public defender and I will never forget an exchange that I once saw between a probation officer and someone that was there to be in court and the probation officer was pointing at the person saying, you have to check in with me every two weeks and you have to drug test and you have to do all these things. And I was looking at the person and said, gentlemen, and he was just kind of like looking around everywhere, clearly not paying attention to anything going on. And finally the probation officer said, did you hear me? Did you hear me? And the guy said, well, I've got a question. I'm legally blind and I need a pair of eyeglasses because I'm unable to see. And I was really, really looking, I was so curious, like how is this probation officer going to respond? And his response was, probation officers don't help people find eyeglasses. And I think that is just like such an example of what our criminal justice system is, right? And applies broadly to the justice tech solutions out there, like have you asked people in the justice system what they need? Have you asked whether the products that you've designed are gonna work for them are gonna be helpful? Have you asked them what unintended consequences you might be creating with your solution? And if you're not close to the problem, if you're not getting that constant cycle of feedback, then you're likely to design something that isn't going to work. And it's just a really, really important thing to keep in mind and goes back to what Jaylani was saying about either having lived, experienced yourself or being committed to going back to that community that you're trying to serve because those are the people that you're building your product for. We need a cultural change because when investors are so tied to quantitative outcomes as proof that ideas work, they become part of the problem. At Creative Acts, we use VR as a reentry tool in solitary confinement, prison is set up to obfuscate everything to the outside, from the outside world, ensuring that we can't see much quantitative data. And so I think, and jump in if I'm not adding to this too, but it is the issue of oftentimes we don't have the data that we need to prove that something is gonna work, right? And so do we need to make sure that we take some risk capital in some impact risk, right? So in my mind, there's the unintended consequences risk, that's scary, I don't wanna create, invest in a solution that's gonna create a bad outcome, right? But if a solution that works could be incredible, we just don't know yet whether or not it works because we don't have the data, but those are the kinds of risks we absolutely need to take, right? And that's what risk reward stuff is all about. I know you guys can, I'm sure you guys can provide feedback on that, Jelani. I know you can. So it's investors definitely do become part of the problem when you're not willing to take risk and especially in this space, in other spaces, I've heard stories where folks have raised millions of dollars and have blown through millions of dollars testing if wherever the idea was really an idea. They didn't have the product market fit. The app to take out your trash, and I'm giving an example. And it's like, this is something where you're willing to spend millions of dollars on, but I'm telling you that we need to close our $1.5 million round because we have product market fit. We have states that are asking for this technology, but we're not sure whether the investment should be made is one of the things that's hindering people being served, right? And it's almost offensive to think that it feels like we don't trust the entrepreneur. We don't trust that you can make this impact and we don't trust that you can give us the financial return. So it makes you wonder, are you really an impact investor because the impact is one thing, the money's another. Which one are you tied to more? Great. I would say there's also not a thing like one type of investor. There's different types of investors that come in at different stages. So I think rightfully so we need to be able to experiment a lot more, improve a lot more because this is a new space. So that's why we need more catalytic and more grants, not just investments, right? Right. To make this happen. This is a space where I think of three points on the triangle here. There's non-profit advocacy work, philanthropic work, a lot of really important reform work and a lot of real understanding of what does and doesn't have great positive outcomes. There's the policy side of things, right? Which is so impactful and some people will say like, isn't this all just a policy issue? We just had better policy when this all go away. But the Gordian knot of policy in the legal system is crazy. It changes from location to location, not just state to state, but from county to county, right? It's incredibly complex. So understanding policy trends, what's working and what's not working, what's happening in a positive direction in some places and a negative direction in other. And then lastly, there's innovation, which often needs another type of capital to scale, tech-enabled innovation. But it's not one or the other. It's not, I don't, when people come in and say like, oh, the market will solve all the problems or oh, this is a philanthropic issue or oh, this is a policy issue. None of that is true. It really requires all three of those things working in connection with another. And I have yet to see a successful transition or change, real disruptive change in society that doesn't require all three of those things. What do I deal, this is sort of outlined with that, what I just said, what do I deal across sector partnerships look like in the justice space? I.e. government, justice tech, nonprofit justice advocacy. I didn't read this before I just said that, I'm sorry. How should other sectors partner with you? I said my part on this, but I'd love to hear your thoughts, Ronald. I mean, we also need to look at how justice tech intersects with other themes, right? Climate justice, for instance, or whether it's migration or employment. But that's a big will to discover. I mean, it's also important from an investor point of view because they all have their own mandates for where the money they have allocated can be put to use. And especially if this is a new space, I mean, it takes a lot of conversation to make sure that that intersection is well explained. And that maybe money that was supposed to go to climate tech kind of makes sense to go to justice tech because it's climate justice, right? But yeah, just need to have all of these conversations. I was just gonna say that, I mean, there's just a need for collaboration among all of the key players and actors, like conversations like this, keep them going, take active steps, and we'll help us reach the next stage, yeah. I just echo that. Criminal justice system is a system and you have to take a systems change approach to the problem if you're gonna solve that and that involves nonprofit partners, it involves directly impacted folks, it involves the government. And Ron mentioned this earlier, but the government really needs to be part of the conversation and should be giving grants for infrastructure improvements for court data, for businesses that are trying to solve these problems because these problems affect public safety, they affect the economy. There's such a tie to public policy that the government needs to be part of the conversation and entrepreneurs need to be advocates for good policy and change the law if needed to create innovation. Next question here, you spoke to the quantities that you look for in a justice tech founder or team. Have you encountered founders that don't have lived experience in the justice system? And if so, what do you look for to ensure they've done the work, earned the trust that's needed to serve those for whom the tech is built for? Another critical piece of information, I mean, in every scenario company that I've looked at and certainly everything that we've spent any real time with, there's been some core part of the team that has a really key, clear understanding of the problem that they're trying to solve. Not every company that we've invested in has been founded by individuals that have lived experience, although more well over half have, they all have some, one is a lawyer that's been a former public defender that's been working to solve a lot of these problems. So you look for different things, but it is critical that at leadership levels in the company that they bring on that lived experience and figure out how to incorporate that into the design of their company at some point. It's not always easy if it's one person that came up with an idea and is trying to build it, but that has to be, I think, an integral part of the company. I think all impact investors, if you're calling yourself an impact investor, I think that you should be looking at companies just like you look at a company and make sure that they have a good diversity program just like you look at a company and make sure they have good social responsibility programs. Every company you invest in, you should ask them to take a fair chance hiring pledge. I mean, 23% of our returning citizen population is unemployed. That's higher than the national unemployment average has ever been in the history of the country, like Great Depression, even though we're at historically low unemployment rates. So all companies should figure out how to do that and figure out how to get that as part of their leadership team. Anybody else like to sort of add to that thought process? Yeah, I think that generally people who have experienced the problem probably that's affected them in one way or the other. Generally like best suited to like solve the problem. They're passionate about it, it has affected them. And I mean, they're willing to go the extra mile. But I mean, that's not to say that. I mean, other people who have had, I mean, other experiences are not able to also, I mean, solve problems like that. Generally, I think that people or founders should not be engrossed with the solutions that they are building, but generally more laser focus on the problem on the users or the people who they're trying to impact. Yeah. Okay, how can justice tech entrepreneurs think about strategies for lobbying to change what laws are, what laws at different levels of government? How can we track recidivism with each individual's actual success? Recidivism is an interesting one because it's incredibly hard to track in this country. But what can companies do? So this is sort of that triangle that I was talking about. What can companies do to help advocate for better policy to help them scale the change that they're trying to make? I mean, literally share how this impacts your business, right? And because maybe the starting point is that you have a common objective, right? And it, but governments don't, most of the time don't know how policies are impacting private sector. So just making this crystal clear and then also have a neutral convener to get everybody into the room because that's not always that easy. So at a good call, we actually took an approach where we're a tech hybrid. We have good call technologies, which is our for-profit which sells the technology to different municipalities and cities. And then we have goodcall.org, which partners with philanthropic entities and local government to actually research and launch philanthropic pilots in states to actually see what is the impact. And then we try to put that in front of legislators to say this is why you need to actually purchase this technology for your city. I think more of a blended approach justice, justice innovators can take with pulling these stakeholders in to as we're talking about really trying to prove out your impact and being able to show the economic impact that it has to these jurisdictions. Many of these jurisdictions are old and antiquated. They don't invest in things that can actually reduce the spend that they have on some of these critical civic issues. So what does it mean to actually partner with these philanthropic entities and make that a part of your mission? We made advocacy a part of our mission on the.org side so that we can actually, and it supports our business because if we can advocate on a national scale for early access to council and get more states on board, then we can sell the technology. Our investors can make their money. Look, it's a win-win, but there has to be the time that's taken for folks to actually invest in terms of the research and pull together the stakeholders that are willing to do the work to advocate for that policy change. It takes time. I had the opportunity to work on a bill before I started RASA in Utah. It's a clean slate bill and automatic record clearance bill. And at the time I was working for the mayor of Salt Lake County and this issue came to us because our statewide chamber said, no, we have all of these workforce centers all across Utah where we're trying to help low-income people find jobs. And the problem is that many of them have criminal records and they can't get hired. And so how can we work together? I know you're a lawyer. I know you all at Salt Lake County are focused on criminal justice policy to solve this problem. That led to sub-community clinics that eventually led to a piece of legislation that proposed to automate record clearance for lower level misdemeanor offenses. And when we ran that bill, we didn't run it as a criminal justice reform bill. We ran it as a jobs bill, a workforce development bill. And I was surprised how just sort of changing the frame and making the issue kind of like relevant to the economy, which is something that conservatives in Utah care deeply about really propelled us into success. The bill did end up passing in 2019. Utah became the second state in the country to have an automatic clearance law. And that law will automatically clear without a lawyer, without a process, without anything, 534,000 records across the state of Utah. And that, so I guess my advice would be is not only explain how it's relevant to your business, but also explain why it's relevant to everyone, how these issues are affecting public safety, how they're affecting their economy, how by promoting people's recovery and helping them move forward, we're creating jobs, we're creating opportunities, we're creating a greater tax base, because I think almost every justice tax solution does have an impact on societal issues and just make the case and use it as an opportunity to not only run a good business, but also change laws that can bring access to people. And this is sort of related as well, but I think it adds to the discussion. So how do you balance your time and efforts and energy on justice tech versus advocacy for policy change that may warrant justice tech unnecessary? For example, you spend time advocating for standardization of data and criminal records or legislation that makes it illegal for employers to consider a criminal record in the hiring system, right? So do you solve the problem or do you try and come up with a better solution around the problem that exists if you can't solve it? And at times it feels like justice tech is just a bandaid, which I also see that point of view as well, right? So you do need to look again at all, that I'll sort of go back to my, I'll go back to my, the market doesn't solve all the problems, policy can't solve all the problems, philanthropy can't solve all the problems, there's an appropriate time to use all of these things, right? And oftentimes they all need to work in partnership. I do think that there are really important solutions. For example, so an example to use right off the top of my head right now is how RASA can take an example of implementing good policy and now we're gonna make it really easy for everybody to take advantage of that policy at a very fast rate, right? That's combining the innovation of the justice sex solution with the policy change. In terms of time and effort spent on those things, you know, I end up, because of what my role is, I end up obviously spending most of my time on the justice tech side, but needing to have a cohort of nonprofit organizations that I work with and I go to for advice around efficacy of solutions and feedback and then secondly, work with a number of organizations that do a lot of policy advocacy work, like dream.org, which has done a lot of great work in that space as well. The other thoughts on sort of how you balance your time there, I mean, I think you guys have already answered this a little bit in different ways. Yeah, I mean, you don't have time to do everything. It's very, very busy being a founder, but I think partnerships are so, so important and coalition building as well. I think every justice tech founder should be figuring out what nonprofits are in this space, like what advocacy organizations are in this space and every year in legislative cycles, we'll get together with this coalition of people working towards a common goal and figure out what I do have time to do, where I can play a role or where somebody else might be able to step in and it's gonna take that type of approach to make change. So I have a question, I'd like to know if any of you are currently working in Mississippi and if not, do you know of any organizations that could aid us with or help individuals that have been or are in the system currently working on getting records expunged and dismantling the school to prison pipeline by working with schools and parents so that the Mississippi is almost always last to benefit from these kinds of resources. When I was doing the research on the 10 states with the highest poverty rate and the 10 states with the highest incarceration rate and not on the top 10 states with the highest crime rate, but Mississippi was on the first two. So perfect example, right? Anybody have any experience directly working? I've never done work in Mississippi. I would love to do work in Mississippi, but I believe the Just Trust, I don't know if you've heard of them. I think that is one of their priority states and if you haven't heard of the Just Trust, a really incredible organization and I think there's a growing trend to focusing on states that typically are last on these lists and really putting some resources towards that. So I'm happy to connect after. I will think some more, but I'm pretty sure Just Trust is working there. There's more, yeah. Mississippi coalition of higher education in prison. Okay, excellent. Then I can probably do some other research around that as well. So if you want to whoever asked the question, if you want to reach out to me later, I'll see what I can help with there. Sorry. I think that says punitive, punitive damage or punitive attitude? Attitude. Does anyone recognize this question? We'll want to say what they said. Here we go. Yes, the, so I think, well, another one that I'd love to get a diverse group of opinions here, but for me it is really around humanity, right? If you keep a group of people separated from society, it is really easy to other those people. As soon as you build connection and relationship, you see humanity in people and that's what I think the trick is. So again, companies don't have a stigma about worrying about hiring somebody with a criminal record, right? Implement fair chance hiring policies. Open your networks. Like that I think is like one of the biggest, the biggest successful stories that I have seen for individuals that are returning home, particularly individuals that are returning home after a long period of time, is getting access to a network. Getting access, so be very generous with your network and connect folks, because that's so important, so helpful. I think exposure is a big part of it and I think about when we were working on that clean sleep bill that I was mentioning, some of our early conversations with police and probation officers. The first time I said to the state police organization, I wanna run an automatic clearance bill that police officers shaking his head and I said, oh hell no, like we're not doing that. Like I said, okay, that didn't go very well. But would you be open to another conversation where I could bring some folks who have criminal records to talk about how it was a barrier and then when they were able to overcome that barrier, what they have gone on to do with their lives, would you be open to that? And thankfully he said yes, but it was really interesting to see how that really transformed kind of this punitive perspective of the police officers, of some of the probation officers and people were saying things like, well that's not what I thought someone with a record would look like. And I think that shows just sort of the bias and prejudice and kind of thoughts going in, but they really were moved by these stories in a way that the state police association went from being very opposed to even the idea of this bill to actually testifying in support and it was really powerful to see people they had supervised now in a totally different life doing well and the impact that had on their thinking of what is possible. So we kind of talked around this a little bit more, but I'd love to hear some other thoughts too. VC is often a default financing approach for tech companies, but that may not be the right vehicle for justice tech if we need justice driven companies to be durable and sustaining rather than turning venture scale hockey stick returns. How should we all be thinking about durable community anchored solutions for financing these important solutions, right? So I think yeah, I think the word venture capital sort of has a appearance. First off, I think that there is every company has the right type of capital that it needs based on what it needs to do and it should only raise that kind of capital it shouldn't be sort of fit into the wrong style of capital. Also not all early stage equity investments need to have hockey stick returns to do well for everybody, including the entrepreneurs and the investors. Different business models have different needs for scalability and different opportunities for scalability and I think what's most important is that you don't try and fit somebody into a hole of financing that they don't fit into because it may work to solve their problems for that year or two years or three years down the road but suddenly as they need to raise money again in the future it suddenly becomes very difficult and that is true honestly of everything from non-profit funding to equity investing. I think that often the wrong type of funding is used for businesses in all categories and you need to be very intentional about how you think about that. I think it's also important to make a real distinction between non-profits and for-profits and although you shouldn't expect hockey sticks it's also very important to have really healthy business models. Right. And especially because we're early on in the ecosystem if you need to build kind of a competitive market also and it's important that maybe now we're still scaling but at some point these are very healthy sustainable businesses that might then but we're talking years further down the line and then maybe normal feces come in instead of impact first. I think fit is really important. What I'll say about tech is it's expensive. Developers, good developers are really really expensive and that takes capital and so I think this type of financing is needed. I think it's what's been one of the things that's been missing from this space but now there's a lot of social impact VC out there which I do think is really different and what caution everybody a lot of people will call themselves a social impact VC but pretty soon in that kind of like exploratory journey with founders as a founder you're gonna be able to see based on the questions the investor asks if they're for real if they're focused on impact or if they're focused on returns. I believe that you can run a good business that you can make money and address some of these issues and have huge impact but you just gotta be aligned. You gotta know what the expectations are going in. You should ask what the expectations are how your success is gonna be measured whether that's by impact or by dollars and if it's by both kind of what they're expecting. I think good communication is a big part of this but I think capital is needed to solve these massive issues and there needs to be more types of capital available to entrepreneurs. So it's interesting and I'll say one of the things that Goodcall did in our approach is I said that we have a nonprofit and a for-profit within our nonprofit we also run an internship program and these are for youth that are 16 to 24 that are from alternative to incarceration programs rather than being sent to a correctional facility they are in our program for eight to 12 weeks learning civic engagement skills and tech skills. This is something that we fund from philanthropic dollars but we saw that what was happening is these young people were actually giving us ideas that we were able to iterate off and build technology for. So why not give these youth the tools to actually be able to create organizations of their own. So it's a lot of investment in this early on education aspect and it's also investing in the leaders that had that lived experience so they can also bring folks on with them. Second chance hiring is a thing that needs to happen and there needs to be investment in that but that comes later on. How do we think about when folks as you're saying before they've had this interaction with the system what does it mean for us to get in these resources? So I'm saying that there definitely needs to be more investment in internship programs and these exposure mechanisms where these youth that have been sorely under-resourced are actually able to be given the opportunity to participate in some of these booming ventures that are existing today. The very short version of my very long question apologies for that is that a lot of the justice tech solutions that are being built in the United States are sort of myopic and that they're looking specifically at the US but we're really addressing global solutions and so how do tech startups engage with the global community from day one or at least in the early startup phase? Apart from it's also a longer conversation I'd love to but I think in our work we also see the different sort of innovations, similar innovations in different regions pop up at the same time and there's a big commonality so what we do within our scope is just to make sure our portfolio all connects and we try to make all the data resources and best practices available for everybody but that's still in our bubble. So I think the point around the movement it's early still there's a justice tech association now maybe they should get everybody together and make sure we share resources more, right? We share portfolio, we share our data and make sure everybody in this space has access. I'd love to see that happen. Thank you. One thing I think would really benefit tech I remember when philosophy became the number one degree that people in Silicon Valley wanted that was a culture change. So I think also tech does not understand the arts in the tech space yet and that's because America does not understand the arts beyond entertainment or for artists. So we use an arts and tech program in Cyprism solitary as well, we use virtual reality in the arts. It has a massive life changing impact for people who tell us all the time if I'd have had this when I was in school I wouldn't be in prison because the arts are essential to be fully human and our emotional intelligence tool and healed trauma. So putting the arts and tech together is a whole new path. And it seemed I'm receiving quite a lot of resistance from the tech world. And I just wondered how if you have any ideas I guess we're trying to change the culture of the whole country's approach to arts but if you have any ideas or thoughts about how to articulate what we're doing with the art and tech for investors so that they can receive it in their language. That's a good question and important one too because I think about this difficulty all the time and having a daughter is far more into arts but wants nothing to do with tech. We have the same sort of clash, right? But I think the language is in the results that you're talking about. When you talk about how this works and what the results are, that's what's, I think that's what's important to understand and be able to talk through is a clear, we are at a clear loss of access to arts in this country, particularly in public schools it is getting less and then less and I think that that's a really big issue. Work with a number of, I mean there's been some incredible work in Chester, Pennsylvania around Devon Walls as an artist in Chester, Pennsylvania has a Chester Arts program which does some incredible work with the local prison as well. So there's a key, there's a key, there are lots of key opportunities there but I think it's all about results and telling the story about the results and what happens I think. Also now very practical, for instance, there's creative contracts, like there's comic versions of contracts that are legally binding and that basically make it a lot easier for people to understand what they're getting into and that can be from a divorce to an employment contract too. And this is, I'd love to share them but that's a very practical way to how arts are integrated into justice. I think just a lot of education more generally I think investors don't understand the justice system they don't understand the arts that and you have to sometimes take them on that journey with you and I think as entrepreneurs we should also be thinking about how to incorporate art more into what we do. We had someone, an artist from Baltimore contact us wanting to contribute her art to what we were doing and so she now paints portraits of justice-impacted people and we've used that to raise awareness of how common it is to have a criminal record and do some of the narrative change work around the stigma associated with the record and so I think we could do better as entrepreneurs. I think you also have to take that time to educate investors and it's hard, it's tough but keep coming back, congratulations to you also. I love what you all are doing and I hope there's more companies like you.