Judd

Easy access to New York State Conviction and Sentencing Data.

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Inspiration

Judd was inspired by the need for transparency and accountability in the criminal justice system. The goal is to provide easy access to accurate and real local conviction and sentencing data, promoting a more just and equitable society. What it does Judd is a web app that presents statistical information on New York State's conviction data. It allows users to:

Find the average sentence for a specific profile (age, race, county, crime type, and degree)
Visualize average sentences as histograms, filtered by age, county, or race
Compare average sentences across different demographic profiles

How we built it

Judd was built using:

Python, Selenium, and Pandas for data collection and scraping
JavaScript, Excel, and Supabase for data preprocessing, cleaning, and storage
React, Node, Vite, and Bootstrap for the web stack
React-chartjs-2 for data visualization

Challenges we ran into

Handling timeout exceptions and element visibility during web scraping
Cleaning and preprocessing large datasets
Importing data into Supabase and handling timeout errors
Designing an intuitive user interface for complex data

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully scraping and processing large datasets
Creating a user-friendly interface for complex data analysis
Developing a robust and scalable web app

What we learned

The importance of data transparency and accountability in the criminal justice system
The challenges of working with large datasets and web scraping
The value of user-centered design in data analysis tools

What's next for Judd

Improving design and user experience
Transitioning to a Postgres database
Adding new features, such as comparing demographics to overall averages and a "Judd index" for sentencing dispersion
Continuing to refine and improve the app based on user feedback and testing.
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