In June of 2015, we announced that St. Louis had been selected for a national initiative of Living Cities, Code for America and the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership to harness civic data and technology to improve the lives of low-income residents.

Under this initiative, Rise, Open Data STL, and St. Louis County collaborated to implement technology solutions to help people navigate the criminal justice system locally, including traffic ticket resolution, appearing in court and resolving warrants. Also, the collection and analysis of data will help improve the operations of these systems.  A $200,000 grant through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Civic Tech and Data Collaborative was awarded for implementation of the initiative. Rise is the fiscal agent for the grant and has managed the funding and the development of the technology.

YourSTLcourts.com is a pre-trial, technology-based-solution now available to navigate the St. Louis County Court system that will help reduce incarceration rates.

The story starts in 2015 when St. Louis based GlobalHack partnered with Rise and our Data Managment Coordinator, at the time, Eleanor Tutt, to form “YourSTLCourts.com”.

Rise’s current Data Managment Coordinator, John Cruz, is one of the project leads and says it’s a simple to use the mobile-friendly site that teaches you how to navigate the system.

Right now the site covers only unincorporated St. Louis County with an estimated 300 thousand people, but anyone who gets a ticket in unincorporated St. Louis County can use it. The site provides a map for users to select a location where they received a ticket and will direct them to the municipality responsible.

We’ll keep you posted as more users go to the site for help and more data is collected.

John Cruz, Data Management Coordinator at Rise

“Part of the overall goal of this is to reduce the number of people who end up incarcerated over seemingly minor infractions or related to traffic or what have you. There needs to be equity in the justice system the same way there needs to be equity in neighborhoods and other areas of our society,”