Watch the recording of the Empathy Hackathon morning session.
View the Third annual Second Chances and Empathy Hackathon award recipients.
Photos from 2021 Empathy Hackathon
(click on photo to see entire album)
Many thanks to our invaluable volunteers: Sydney Yazzolino, Diann Jayakoddy, Kelly Wynn, Hussain Reza, Kratika Sharma, Steve Wang, Nicole Poirot, Kiran Sataria, Nima Masjedi Zadeh, Imelda Marin, Helen Tang, Danielle Graugnard, Jo Garcia, Liz Magana, Ahmed Al-Obaid, Jason Cowan, Taylor LaFrancis, Chirayu Biyani, Melanie Ayllon Bartet, Saloni Vichare.
About this event
The hackathon brings together the diverse members of our campus and local community to not just SUPPORT organizations that are working on the front lines to IMPROVE our criminal justice system but also to tap into the community’s EMPATHY for these complex problems. This work is motivated in part by the desire to close the “second chance gap,” the difference between eligibility and delivery of second chances. Prof. Colleen Chien’s research suggests that millions of Americans fall into this gap.
Across the country, dozens of states have enacted “second chance” legislation, designed to help individuals with criminal records 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 the tens of millions. However, while new laws have expanded the bases for clearance, only a small fraction of those eligible for relief have received it.
On October 23, 2021, Santa Clara University will host the third annual Second Chances and Empathy Hackathon. This year, as in the two previous years, teams of data scientists, engineers and lawyers in training will gather to create technology and legal solutions for county public defender offices and nonprofit re-entry and criminal justice organizations. They will be joined by guest judges and mentors. In the two previous hackathons, students redesigned a website, created a chatbot for website, performed research and created visualizations to dramatize the problems with mandatory sentencing, and created auto-fill software for court petition forms amongst other solutions! We feel sure that this year’s Hackathon participants will make similar critical contributions!
