Hack For LA

We are a local Brigade of the national non-profit Code for America, called Hack For LA. We organize project teams to work on specific projects, and the teams run out of weekly “hack nights” in Santa Monica, DTLA, and Inglewood. These meetings have been held virtually since March 2020.

Expunge Assist

Expunge Assist (formerly known as the Record Clearance Project) is a project of Hack for LA. Expunge Assist helps people in California with criminal records accomplish record clearance, expungement or reduction as a result of Prop 47 & Prop 64.

We are currently building a Personal Statement Generator to facilitate the record expungement petitioning process.

Project context

Record clearance or reduction in California is possible as a result of legislation which includes Prop 64 & Prop 47.

Community organizers and non-profits are already working in this space to clear records for millions of eligible cases. New legislation under AB 1793 has initiated the process of automation for many of these records. Still, many Californians will still have to submit a petition to have their record cleared.

In early discovery research, we...

• met organizers and public defenders
• attended an expungement clinic run by our partner NDICA to map clinic attendee experiences first-hand
• created service blueprints and identified pain points for petition applicants

Next, we...

• designed wireframes and a clickable prototype in Figma
• created a functional survey to test the initial design structure and content
• began development of the tool, with plans for a soft launch in April 2021

Currently, we are in the process of...

• learning what changes in process due to pandemic-related constraints on holding clinics in person
• mapping the experience journeys of legal experts who assist with clinics
• identifying ways to refine our product design to met the most urgent needs of expungement experts

After we roll out the first MVP this spring, we will conduct usability testing and iterate the product design and build, map potential expansion of end user base, and localize the tool into other languages, Spanish as priority.

Onboarding Process

1 Add your info to the team roster

2 Create a Slack Account & Add yourself to Slack channel #expunge-assist on hackforla.slack.com

3 Review On-boarding Doc

Additional info

Besides the On-boarding doc you can find insight on this project by reviewing;

• Project One Sheet
• Google drive
  • background
  • Research & Rights on record clearance
  • Personas
• AB-1793 Cannabis convictions bill
• Prop 47 FAQ

Technology used

• Slack for instant message communication
• Github & Google Drive for documentation
  • For the purpose tracking progress and general of administration of the project we will be using Github's Kanban boards
• Teleconference meetings
  • Hosted on Zoom – notify Gretchen on Slack that you would like to attend via Teleconference
  • Link to meeting [live on alternating Mondays between 6-7 pm PST](Check Expunge Assist slack channel for the Zoom invite at the designated meeting time)

How to contribute

Explain the different ways people can contribute. For example:

• Join the team on Slack channel and at our biweekly Monday hack night in person or teleconference (start at 6pm).
• To help with user research, sync with Apurva.
• To provide design support, sync with Gretchen.
• To contribute to the code, sync with Daniel.

Process for meetings:

1. We will start each meeting by looking over the Automated Kanban board, using it to drive meetings & agenda points.

2. When the group creates action items we will document them as issues and they will be prioritized & assigned on the Kanban board.

Installation instructions {TBA}

1. Step-by-step instructions help new contributors get a development environment up and running quickly.
2. You'll want to find the balance between being specific enough for novices to follow, without being so specific that you reinvent the wheel by providing overly-basic instructions that can be found elsewhere.
3. Feel free to adapt this section and its sub-sections to your own processes.
4. Alternatively, you can move everything from Installation instructions through Testing to a separate Contributing.md file to keep your ReadMe.md more succinct.

Working with forks, branches, pull requests and reviews

• We should only have one master branch at this time. At this point in the project, we are not working with any code yet. All progress being made will be track on Github.

Testing

• We are not at this stage yet.

Contact info

Thomas Demoner - Product Manager - Slack: @Thomas Demoner

Valeriya Metla - PM (Research) - Slack: @Valeriya Metla

Jamie Siu - PM (Design) - Slack: @Jamie Siu

Daniel Xiao - Tech Lead - Slack: @Daniel Xiao

Licensing {TBA}

Copyright 2021 Hack for LA

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

this readme file sourced from Jessica Sand