When on probation or parole, individuals earn their way toward less intensive supervision (or release) by meeting court-mandated requirements over months or years. However, because progress lived across fragmented databases and paper files, agency staff spent hours manually compiling paperwork to verify eligibility. Staff often could not see who was already eligible, and even when they could, completing a change meant rebuilding the entire packet by hand. This created an administrative bottleneck where qualified people stayed stuck past the point they had earned their release, while supervision officers lost hours to clerical work instead of supporting the people on their caseload.

We built a system that automatically identifies who qualifies for a change and pre-fills the required forms directly from their record. Working cross-functionally, we mapped the data directly to each state's source systems, eliminating manual data entry while preventing human errors. This shifted the officer's role from data collector to reviewer, allowing them to quickly file instead of starting from a blank packet.

Prioritizing field research, we designed alongside both Department of Corrections workers and the incarcerated population at each step of the process. In Tennessee, transfer packet completion times dropped from 30–60 minutes to a short review, saving officers over 1,000 hours shortly after launch.

Another clear application of our approach is our resident-facing product, designed to give incarcerated individuals direct visibility into their own trajectories. Inside prison facilities, essential information about sentence calculations, earned good time, and program eligibility traditionally lived behind staff barriers. Incarcerated people had to rely on case managers just to find out basic milestones, creating widespread anxiety, rumor-driven expectations, and endless administrative requests. Staff spent hours each day helping residents find answers to status questions rather than helping them prepare for release.

We spent time in facilities translating on-the-ground observations into clear product guardrails and a distinct, human-centered voice. The resulting interface translates dense policy and sentence calculations into plain language, showing people their exact timeline, earned credits, and upcoming eligibility dates. It introduces self-service features that allow residents to browse facility programming, bookmark courses, and complete key intake forms at their own pace, while intentionally excluding sensitive charge data to protect user privacy in shared living spaces.

As the product expanded to new state partners, we built out the design infrastructure necessary to scale it sustainably. A modular framework ensured that state-specific variations could be deployed rapidly without compromising usability or trust. Across partner states, over 60% of residents with access use the app monthly, while 80% of staff report a drop in repetitive sentence questions, proving how seemingly small design details can transform agency across an entire population.

Beyond specific product workflows, designing for the criminal justice sector requires navigating an environment where trust is difficult to build and easy to lose. Traditional corrections software are bleak legacy enterprise tech that treats people as line items. During the early days, we needed a visual identity and voice that earned trust with state agency leadership while honoring the humanity of the people navigating the system. Aside from our company name, which usually takes people a couple of tries to spell correctly, we made sure every part of our brand was unmistakable in its simplicity.

We landed a language that emphasizes dignity, clarity, and utility. We established design principles that stripped away sensationalism and jargon in favor of plain words, transparent data visualization, and accessible interactions. We applied this ethos across every touchpoint, from our public-facing website and partnership proposals down to the daily software used on prison tablets and officer desktops. This cohesive identity established a distinct presence that resonated with both state leaders and frontline staff, helping position our platform as a trustworthy partner as we expanded nationwide.