I am not the sum total of all of my mistakes. 

It was just a different life that I started getting involved with-- 

I did something stupid, which was take something that didn't belong to myself. 

It was a problem with me, with my drinking. 

--driving on a suspended license. 

I got my first couple of tickets, and then they started to snowball. 

With it came a lot of consequences. 

Every detail of our lives is scrutinized by a system that isn't positioned to help us to see-- 

Being a single mother, having this job, that job, I'm dyslexic, and so stuff is swirling around in my head all the time anyway. 

They got other things worried about, their families keeping a roof over their heads. 

In addition to lack of resource, sometimes they don't have a way to communicate directly with the public defender their attorney is representing. 

I did try to call my attorney a few times but trying to get a hold of them it's pointless. 

Because when you call it's like a whole bunch of numbers, you don't really get a hold of anybody. 

So when people miss court, it's called a failure to appear, an FTA. And these FTAs have massive consequences. 

More came out, failure to appear. 

The fine was doubled, and the amount of time was tripled. 

And it comes in a pretty bad spiral. 

I have my six-year-old son with me-- 

And once you're in the system, it really is hard to get of it. 

--to go and see the probation officer a day after I was scheduled to do it. He said, no problem go ahead and come in. 

The penalty for forgetting should not be prison. 

And then he arrested me with my son. And he put shackles on my hands and feet in front of my son. Like how horrible. Because I'm thinking about what is he thinking about his mom? In shackles? Because of a no license ticket? 

That same system does not give you permission to actually be a human and make mistakes that aren't crimes but basic human mistakes like forgetting an appointment. 

They made me spread my cheeks and cough for a driving ticket. 

So, for us, we're really focused on this really small problem that had these massive ramifications for real people. 

Which was, how do we help people make it to court? 

I've been feeling really shitty about myself, like I'm some low common criminal that you're just a horrible person. 

We give people access to the resources that they need to stay out of trouble. And right now, that key resource is their public defender. 

We handle up to 25,000 to 30,000 cases in any given year. 

So what Uptrust was able to do was to do what someone had if they had infinite amount of time that could provide the right reminders, the right social supports at the right time for hundreds of clients at a time. 

The first time we engaged Uptrust, it was with the idea of sending messages to our clients, letting them know you've got a court date. You need to make sure. And we do it periodically. 

And then the cost of incarcerating that person, holding that person because they were five minutes late to a court date, costs taxpayers' money to keep them incarcerated, and it cost the family all kind of hardships. 

With our technology, we go into places, and we usually see at least a 50% reduction in failures to appear. 

One of the pushbacks we were seeing was often saying that if you don't set money bail, people won't show up to court. 

This idea of flight risk was a myth. 

It really comes down to this attendance risk where somebody is missing court for fully preventable reasons. 

And just in a bad place for a while mentally, and trying to cope with everything not only physically, but going on within my home with my family and things like that. 

Because after that, a warrant was issued, and then COVID happened. And there's just no way I could deal with any of the demands of the court. 

There's a lot more to do in this space of demystifying the justice system. 

It's emotionally draining, physically draining, and financially it kills you financially. 

It's one thing to help people through the maze. It's another to help dismantle the maze itself and try to make things just make a little bit more sense. 

Uptrust is not a silver bullet. We're not going to overhaul the criminal legal system in a race centuries of racist practices. But there's a real problem out there that we're able to help solve. And by doing so, we can keep people out of jail that shouldn't be there. 

With life's little problems, when there are so many of them, I look to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I have to take care of the base; food, water, shelter, the kids, and try and chip away at the hierarchy one day at a time, a little bit of a time. 

The resiliency of the human spirit is there, and people honestly want second chances. 

We can think about what it means to pour into people the things that they need to right their wrongs, so to speak, and to really turn things around. We have an opportunity to stop throwing people away.