The ABA Center for Innovation will hold a design event in Boston to create an app that helps victims of hate crimes. The event will gather participants in the legal, technology and design spheres to create a mobile app that will allow users to determine whether they are victims of hate crimes and provide them with resources to report it.
Sponsored by the Center for Innovation and Suffolk Law, along with CuroLegal and Stanford Law School's Legal Design Lab, the event entitled "Legal Design Sprint: Responding to Hate Crimes Through Technology" will be held at Suffolk University Law School on Mar. 20. The goal of the event is to provide an easy way for people to figure out whether their rights have been violated, what they can do, and how to get help through a much-simplified tool.
The recent months have seen an alarming rise in hate crimes, especially against Muslims, according to the FBI. There was a sharp rise in hate crimes following Donald Trump's election as president, which later declined since the post-election period.
Hate crimes against Jewish people also appear to be on the rise. Multiple bomb threats have occurred in Jewish community centers, as well as incidents of vandalism at Jewish cemeteries.
Center for Innovation director Janet Jackson, hopes the app will be an effective impediment to hate crimes reporting. "Our hope is that the app will walk victims through how to report a hate crime and what local resources are available to help them. We need something that can be used nationally, but also locally," Jackson says, according to ABA Journal.
The invitation-only event currently has approximately 20 to 25 participants signed up, expecting people to join in. The goal of the event will be to design an app that can be used by both Android and iOS users for hate crimes reporting although Jackson has revealed the possibility that it could web-based.
