Cohort 2023

Greater Cleveland Neighborhood Centers Association

A Mobile App to Increase Defendant Engagement in the Criminal Legal System

Cuyahoga County, OH

The criminal legal system is complex and challenging for defendants, who are often expected to make crucial decisions without adequate information. The average defendant must complete 200 tasks during their legal proceedings, with any misstep having severe consequences. Providers of legal aid for low-income defendants often do not have the time to advise their clients properly. Because of this, disadvantaged defendants often do not have the information needed to navigate the legal system, leading to stark racial disparities in who is incarcerated. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Black defendants are held in jail at 6.4 times the rate of white defendants. unBail, a fiscally sponsored project of the Greater Cleveland Neighborhood Centers Association in Cuyahoga County, has been working to create a more equitable legal system to combat these issues.

With Catalyst Grant funding, the Greater Cleveland Neighborhood Centers Association, through the work of unBail, and in partnership with Theory and Principle and the Cuyahoga County Office of Innovation and Performance, will develop a free mobile app to provide defendants with active felony cases in Cuyahoga County with timely, relevant, and accurate information about their cases and breakdowns of complex legal processes throughout all stages of the pretrial process. The app will be targeted primarily toward low-income Black males to address disparities in jail incarceration. unBail hopes that by increasing defendant engagement and making the legal system more transparent, court appearance rates will increase, and case outcomes will become more equitable. After the app is implemented, unBail intends to use user feedback to pinpoint how to better prepare defendants and inform them about their cases.