The idea did not arrive as a product brief.
I was in a communication app. The kind families already pay to use. Add a contact. Pick a state. Pick a jail. Then a search box: Enter Contacts Name.
I typed two letters. It handed me a list.
Two letters in a communication app.
A list. A day. Then a map for families.
The idea did not arrive as a product brief.
I was in a communication app. The kind families already pay to use. Add a contact. Pick a state. Pick a jail. Then a search box: Enter Contacts Name.
I typed two letters. It handed me a list.
Not a neural net. Not a grant. A search box so hungry to complete an account that two characters were enough to walk the alphabet.
After that it was a math problem. Twenty-six times twenty-six is not infinity. It is a day. With that simple idea I compiled the database in a day.
“This is the least these prey-on-the-weak
businesses can do.”
If a company will charge a mother a vig to say goodnight, the very least it can do is stop pretending the humans on the other end of the wire are a secret. They already built the index. They already sold the stamps. Two letters and the curtain moves.
The line between thought and creation is getting blurred. That used to scare people. It should also make you grateful.
This is absolutely the best time to be alive — if you spend the speed on something that helps the person on the cheap phone, not the booth.
I will not reprint the names the search box spat out. The point is the box, not the people.
The ethics are the product.
“Two letters. A day. A database.
The ethics are the product.”
When someone you love disappears into a Wisconsin county jail or a DOC prison, the first job is not philosophy. It is: where are they, who runs the phone, how do I put money on the books, and can I even confirm they are there.
I built Jailwatch so a worried person on a phone does not have to hunt that across seventy-two counties and thirty-seven prisons. The public title is Human beings in custody in Wisconsin.
Official rosters first. Vendor lists second, behind a capacity screen. A third pile held on purpose. Eight counties still have no route at all. A refresh is someone running a command. I am not going to pretend that is a feature.
In Nevada they sell the tablet and the 50% load fee. In Wisconsin their search box gave up the map for two letters. Same last mile.
Knowledge should not require a surcharge. Finding a human being should not require a mugshot site. A call home should not require a second job.
Use it. Send it to someone who needs it.
Open JailwatchThe Vig Is the Point · the invoice next to the map
GitHub login. No Disqus. If the box is empty, the Giscus app still needs installing on the comments repo.