Strange Loop

2009 - 2023

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St. Louis, MO

Justice For Sale

There are over 2 million people imprisoned in this country. Justice has a price, and the number of people who can afford it decreases every day. Massive corporations and powerful individuals can commit offenses and immediately leverage their financial resources into legal power. Millionaires can pay for access to troves of data, enlist a cornucopia of expensive services, and afford to wait for them in comfort. Half a million people are in jail today who have not even been convicted of any crime, and they cannot.

The gap is widening, and this is where technology can help. The ability of computation to scale resources could enable us to provide legally-relevant tools and information to make justice affordable. Many organizations try to diminish the inequality built in to the purposely-obfuscated and overcomplicated design of the legal system, and there is much to learn from them on the road to eliminating inequity entirely. With particular focus on tackling mass incarceration, in this talk we'll explore how technology could help balance the criminal system to provide freedom and justice for all.

Brittany Wald

Brittany Wald

I am a computer programmer with 4 years of professional experience in web applications and distributed systems. I went to NYU law school briefly, but dropped out after deciding that I thought technology provided more possibilities for righting the world's wrongs. I love playing games of all kinds, and periodically develop them.