Posted September 7, 2023

We’re excited to announce that JusticeText has been named as a finalist for the Justice Innovation Prize organized by Dream.org! As a finalist, JusticeText will receive a $50,000 grant to expand access to our technology among public defenders nationwide. In addition, our team has been invited to pitch at SOCAP 2023 in San Francisco in October, with the opportunity to earn an additional $250,000 to support our work.

The Justice Innovation Prize is a $1 million effort to support the next big innovations working to end the cycle of mass incarceration. The prize is an effort from Dream.org, an organization with a vision to reduce the number of people behind bars, minimize pollution, and create greater economic opportunity for future generations. JusticeText was selected as one of five finalists out of a pool of more than 75 applicants by a panel of judges that included justice reform advocates, entrepreneurs, investors, and justice-impacted individuals.

The U.S. has the highest per-capita prison population in the world, with more than 2 million people trapped behind bars at any given moment. This mass incarceration disproportionately affects people of color - a 2021 report from The Sentencing Project highlights that Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly 5 times the rate of white Americans. Dream.org founder, Van Jones, explained the need to invest in innovation that can disrupt this system:

“The United States has a $90 billion per year incarceration industry that is built on a ‘repeat customer’ model and designs from the 17th century. It's time that we tap the transformative power of new technology to disrupt this industry, the same way solar companies, Amazon, Airbnb and Uber disrupted theirs.”

JusticeText challenges mass incarceration by arming public defenders with the technology to keep innocent people out of prison. Our AI-powered tools distill key legal insights across hours of body-worn camera footage with the ultimate goal of improving criminal justice outcomes for low-income defendants.

Public defenders are uniquely positioned to disrupt mass incarceration given their outsized role in the system – over 80% of people facing criminal charges require a public defender. Yet excessive caseloads, sometimes 5x larger than recommended limits to provide quality defense, limit their ability to review a growing body of audio and video discovery.

JusticeText co-founder and CEO, Devshi Mehrotra, started JusticeText with a vision to shift to the role of technology in the criminal justice system. “I am excited to see how the justice innovation ecosystem continues to grow and diversify in the coming years," she said. "Initiatives like the Justice Innovation Prize emphasize the importance of having technologists work directly alongside policymakers and legislators to address this humanitarian crisis.”