How a Two-Way Text Messaging System Keeps People Out of Jail

Kashawna Harris and her children, Gunnar (18 months) on her shoulder, and Gauge five months). Photo courtesy Kashawna Harris

Kashawna Harris, 30, has been in and out of the criminal legal system since she was 12 years old for drug offenses and theft charges. Like so many people who have been justice-involved, she’s cycled through the system—experiencing homelessness and struggling with sobriety over the years.

But a new application has changed her life.

The app, which connects probation officers and their clients, has helped her obtain the resources she needs and comply with probation terms.

In the past, when she was trying to comply with court orders to keep her out of prison, she struggled to communicate with her probation officer and keep track of appointments.

Harris has been using Uptrust, an application with two-way text messaging, and automated reminders for court dates for the past six months, through a pilot program in Clinton, Iowa.

Uptrust, a for-profit company hoping to reduce jail time on technical violations by simplifying the communication process in the criminal legal system, was founded when co-founders Jacob Sills and Elijah Gwynn saw what Sills described as judges and prosecutors conflating attention issues and challenge with flight risk.

Court creates a logistical problem for all involved. For someone who is being charged, there are court dates, appointments, and check-ins. For public defenders with large case-loads, there are a lot of clients to make sure show up at the right time for the right appointment.

“Any time you get on probation there’s something you need to complete, substance abuse evaluation whatever it might be,” said Harris. “There were several times that I didn’t remember when the date was because they just told me in the office and I didn’t have stable living or transportation to get to court. “

The Technical Violation Trap

Harris is explaining a technical violation—which is different than a new violation.

The latter is what would end up being a charged crime, like a robbery. A technical violation includes behavior that breaks probation or parole rules, like failing to show up for court or missing a check-in meeting.

Probation and parole officers usually have discretion over what might result in an arrest, but probation keeps individuals in a precarious place where wrong moves or new charges can leave someone in jail.

More than one third of some jail populations are made of individuals in trouble with “detainers.” Nearly two-thirds of those individuals in a U.S. jail are actually not yet convicted of a crime, which means they might be waiting for a trial. Pretrial detention also accounts for $14 billion in taxpayer dollars every year.

Photo courtesy Uptrust

Uptrust started connecting with public defenders’ offices to help streamline communication with clients by creating a two-way messaging application that sends automated text messages and allows for text messaging between public defenders and clients without utilizing personal phone numbers. It has since expanded into probation offices and plans to work in dependency court as well.

The Los Angeles Public Defender’s Office, with more than 700 lawyers and home to one of the largest jail systems in the nation, has been using Uptrust on a pilot basis since last year.

Ramon Quintana, division chief of a special division that deals with mental health and holistic models of representation, said the attorneys have so far had positive experiences using the application, particularly since there is automatic and confidential communication with clients that don’t involve giving up their cell phone number all the time.

Using an application with many different users, as opposed to Santa Clara County which is developing its own application in partnership with Stanford Computational Policy Lab, allows attorneys in LA to benefit from information from attorneys elsewhere with their own experiences, he said.

“We could develop our own solution within [our own case management system],” Quintana said.

“But one thing we learned from discussing this with other agencies is, because [Uptrust] is  working with a lot of public defenders offices, they are learning what works and what doesn’t and developing other solutions and we get that for free. That’s a benefit for us.”

Los Angeles is waiting for full approval from the Board of Supervisors before implementing the solution more broadly in the Public Defender’s Office.

‘Not Rocket Science’

“Nothing that we’re doing is true rocket science,” Sills agreed.

But simplifying communication allows public defenders and probation officers to focus on relationships with clients. Saskia Schweitzer, a probation officer in Iowa’s Fifth Judicial District, said her goal is to spot red flags in behavior and increasing communication increases the ability to see potential issues.

“My job is to reach out to them and say ‘what can I do to help you?’ A lot of times they’re not going to come to me, whether it’s embarrassment or they just don’t trust me enough,” she said.

She thinks text messages help. Currently, about half of her 200 clients are using Uptrust.

Today, Uptrust is being used in about 80 public defenders’ offices in around 300 counties, Sills said.

Some probation offices, like the one supervising Harris, are also turning to applications like Uptrust.

Gina Gregoire, Harris’s probation officer and an early user of Uptrust’s probation partnerships said she uses the application to message clients, send appointment reminders and assign service like substance abuse treatment or local food banks.

On the application, clients are able to search for social services they need and find locations nearby, she said.

From her perspective as the probation officer in charge of supervision, she finds it helpful to be able to connect people with services they need as well as facilitate comfortable conversation with clients.

“Some people just don’t feel comfortable saying to someone’s face something they might say in writing. Some people communicate better that way.”

Anecdotally, she said that she notices clients are more able to express when they might need help or might be having trouble staying on track with certain programming when they have the ability to send a message as opposed to call her.

Harris agreed being able to text someone makes it a lot easier to ask for help and to comply with court orders as simple as contacting one’s probation officer within a certain time frame.

“If something were to happen when I’m on probation, say I was to get pulled over and am getting a speeding ticket,” Harris said.

“In my terms and conditions I have to notify my probation officer of having any sort of interaction with the police within 24 hours.”

She continued: “Say the office is closed, I can still meet that criteria with the ability to text.”

That instance likely would not have sent Harris back to prison but would have required more conversations and explanations, putting more on the plate of a mother of two young boys full time enrolled in college attempting to maintain sobriety and comply with the rules of her probation.

Though she appreciates the ease of messaging clients, Gregoire said using applications like Uptrust can’t ultimately solve the problems of jail time on technical violations on its own.

“We are dealing with a lot of people with substance abuse issues… 90 percent of my caseload probably use meth or have been addicted to it at some point in time,” she said.

“People who are not going to report in I’m not sure that those appointment reminders are helpful. They’re not reporting for other reasons.”

Quintana agreed the individuals most likely to be helped by an application like Uptrust is those who need more communication with attorneys for reminders and to increase conversation and comfort.

Though he said Uptrust was hoping to reduce failures to appear (FTA), he didn’t “flag that as necessarily a success, but we did have a low FTA rate of six percent for people that were participating,” Quintana said.

He cautioned against counting that as a success because clients who already have cell phones are already more reliable and likely to appear at upcoming court dates.

“FTA rates are extremely high across the board so any tool you can bring to bear on this to reduce those rates is an important tool to gain the trust of judges and prosecutors to releasing clients,” he said.

Lauren Sonnenberg is a TCR staff contributor. This story was supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous reporting about responses to social problems.