Jelani Anglin
Founded by Jelani Anglin, Good call is a tech hybrid that addresses mass incarceration in the US by providing early access to legal support. While currently only 1% of people have access to a lawyer at the time of arrest, Good Call’s toll-free hotline service connects arrestees to a free lawyer and can also keep family members informed of their situation. Here, Jelani talks to Ashoka’s Simon Stumpf about why early contact with a lawyer is critical and discusses how technology can help dismantle the prison-industrial complex.
Simon Stumpf: Take us back to the beginning of your work, Jelani. What have you seen that others have not seen?
Jelani Anglin: I was arrested at the age of 16. My friends and I – all young black men – were reportedly too noisy on a train. It was a traumatizing incident, but it led me to connect with other people in my community who had been arrested. What did we all have in common? We all wish we had gotten in touch with legal counsel earlier in the process. We wish we had some support from a lawyer and knew what to do before being questioned. Because the consequence of people not getting the counsel they deserve, not getting a fair chance in our justice system, is sometimes their entire life taken away.
stub: You have described Good Call’s offer as an “early legal intervention.” How does the arrest process work and why is early intervention so important?
Angelin: If you are arrested, you are taken to a police station, your belongings are taken and you are given the chance to call, but only to a number you can remember by heart – and how many of us remember numbers without our cell phones, However? This often results in no support of any kind. People are interrogated by the police and forced to sign statements under duress. With Good Call, we provide immediate access to a lawyer when people first arrive at the police station. That attorney can invoke their client’s Sixth Amendment right of representation and halt the questioning process until an attorney is present, giving people a chance to make a better defense.
stub: What technology have you built to facilitate that intervention?
Angelin: It starts with a hotline number that a family member or the arrested person can call directly. The hotline operator notifies us of the arrest, which enables us to put the accused in touch with a lawyer who can stop the interrogation process. This also enables us to send the client’s information to the lawyer who will be present at the arraignment.
If a lawyer only sees his client at the arraignment, he has about five minutes to come up with a defense. With our technology, the lawyer receives all the basic information from the client at an early stage, giving more time to gather relevant details and build a defense.
Another important part of our technology is an emergency contact database. People can save emergency contacts in advance, in case they get arrested. During that same conversation with a lawyer, they can text their loved ones through the lawyer to notify them of the arrest.
stub: How does it work? Are you gaining users?
Angelin: We are currently getting a few hundred calls a month, but we want to do more. We are a sloppy organization and we are eager to expand our outreach team. We see a lot of word of mouth, organic growth. This year we put up billboards all over New York City. Each billboard with the hotline number generated about 70,000 impressions per week. And we’re not saying that everyone who reads that issue will be arrested in the future, just letting people know that this resource is available – that’s the narrative shift we’re trying to create.
stub: Do you see a political shift in favor of your work?
Angelin: Yes, we are at the beginning of an understanding that there should be more support sooner. For example, California Policy Lab did a study that found that when people have access to legal representation, it increases their chances of being released on their own admission by more than 50%. So while we’re still behind, we’re seeing a shift across the country on the policy side. Three states have passed legislation mandating early access to counseling. Fifteen other states have recently brought it forward.
stub: As a “scrappy” organization, how do you scale your solution to land in more places?
Angelin: For the past six years we have been doing this as a non-profit and we have been fortunate enough to raise over $4 million in donations and grants. But now, after doing research and development, we believe we can scale faster as a hybrid non-profit/for-profit entity. We can hire people who are formally incarcerated because those who are close to the problem are closest to the solution. Raising money from impact investors on a for-profit basis, hiring more engineers, and building more technology really helps us grow and provide different types of support.
For example, we’re starting to get calls from the border about immigration issues. Why not use our technology in other situations bordering on arrest? There are ACP issues, immigration issues, housing issues that could lead to arrests. People who are marginalized in these areas also lack support. So our technology can be used to put power in their hands.
stub: How will things look different in five or ten years?
Angelin: We have plans to build an app that will help people navigate the system better. It’s wild to think that you can track down a pizza today, but you can’t find a loved one when they get arrested. There’s more innovation on the side of trapping humanity than helping people escape.
stub: Jelani, what’s powerful about your contribution here is that it raises where the system is seemingly designed to let people down. And you talked about the need to push through policy changes, not just wait for this shell of incarceration to collapse under its own weight.
Angelin: Unfortunately, it will never collapse under its own weight. It’s a for-profit system in a capitalist country – a booming business. There are over 12 million people in prison every year, 500,000 are currently in prison without even being convicted of a crime. Taxpayers pay more than $14 billion each year to incarcerate these individuals. Prison labor, which is close to slavery, helps boost our economy.
This system feeds on people who are poor. Your best defense is simply to be rich, to have a lawyer at your fingertips. It is all those people without resources who are the corn of the mass incarceration system. So if we want to slow down the system and ultimately kill it, it starts at the police station.
This interview was shortened by Ashoka.
