When people first go to court, they generally having their full hearing set for a later date. To make sure people return to court, judges often set a monetary bail that the person must pay in order to go free until that hearing date. There are two main problems here:
a) If a person cannot pay bail, they are held in jail without having yet been convicted of a crime. They can lose their job, apartment, or children in the time they spend in jail waiting for trial. b) Judges do not take into account a person's wealth or income when setting bail. So, this problem disproporitionately affects the poor and people of color.
For a detailed report on bail in Buffalo go here: https://ppgbuffalo.org/files/documents/criminal-justice/cruelty_and_cost_money_bail_in_buffalo.pdf
To run locally:
- Download Python 3.6.6 (https://www.python.org/downloads/)
- In the command line: pip install django
- Clone the repo from GitHub to the location of your choice
- Change directories to court_watch\courtwatch
- Run: python manage.py runserver
- Open a web browser and go to the address it says it is running at