While all hackathons are about empowering solvers, the Second Chances and Empathy Hackathon aims to empower solvers by giving them exposure - up close and personal - to social justice problems and justice-involved leaders. By working on real problems, for real organizations and real people, participants tap into what Bryan Stevenson describes as "the power of proximity."

The Hackathon has been recognized by the National Law Journal and California Daily Journals with "Tech Trailblazer" awards and teaches participants skills such as developing websites to field calls from prisons, and creating algorithms to parse public records and create forms for processes. Participants also write code and perform research projects for nonprofit groups to support re-entry and innocence projects.

On October 23, 2021, Santa Clara University hosted the third annual Second Chances and Empathy Hackathon. This year, as in the two previous years, teams of data scientists, engineers and lawyers in training will gather to create technology and legal solutions for county public defender offices and nonprofit re-entry and criminal justice organizations. They will be joined by guest judges and mentors. In the two previous hackathons, students redesigned a website, created a chatbot for website, performed research and created visualizations to dramatize the problems with mandatory sentencing, and created auto-fill software for court petition forms amongst other solutions! We feel sure that this year’s Hackathon participants will make similar critical contributions!

Find out more and Register: SCU Post | Eventbrite

Hackathon Partners:
Yolo County PD | Safe and Just California | UnCommonLaw | #cut50 | National Justice Impacted Bar Association | NCIP