for a meeting with the county or a funder

who this is

Project Jail Cell, Inc. is a Florida nonprofit corporation applying for 501(c)(3) status. It runs one program: What Happens Now, a free bilingual page that explains the first 24 hours after an arrest. The founder is a former Alachua County booking deputy. Nobody profits from an arrest.

the program

• A QR code on the patrol car or the arrest paperwork for the family.
• A locked tablet in booking for the person arrested, before the free call.
• Facts confirmed by the jail and the court — tagged “confirm with the jail” until a person has actually confirmed them.
• English and Spanish. Open source (Apache-2.0). No names, no case numbers, no discussion of what happened.

what Alachua is asked for

Sheriff’s Office

One afternoon confirming the facts on a checklist; the QR code on arrest paperwork and a few patrol cars; one tablet in booking, in guided access.

County Commission

Ten minutes at the public safety coordinating council, and a champion who wants the before-and-after numbers.

City of Gainesville

The QR code on police patrol cars and arrest paperwork — city arrests reach the same jail.

Public Defender and Pretrial Services

A review of the first-appearance and pretrial wording, and the office’s two phone numbers.

Year one: nothing. Hosting is free, and the pilot runs on a few hundred dollars of filing and printing costs we cover. After a year of results, a small annual support agreement — under the county’s small-purchase threshold — or a crime-prevention grant keeps the facts verified every quarter.

what a grant pays for

The product is already built and costs about $0 a year to host. A grant of $50,000–$100,000 pays for Spanish review, verification labor across the 8th Circuit, an outcome evaluation with the Public Defender, kiosk hardware if a county cannot supply a tablet, and attorney review of the copy. We will claim no effect of our own until the Alachua pilot produces one.

Timely, plain information changes what happens next. Court-date reminders reduced failure-to-appear by 11 to 61 percent across eleven of twelve studies reviewed by the Pew Charitable Trusts (May 2025). A randomized trial of 5,709 public-defender clients in Santa Clara County, published in Science Advances (October 2025), reduced bench warrants by 20 percent and pretrial incarceration by 21 percent using three text messages. What Happens Now applies the same mechanism earlier — the first day instead of the week before court — and we will claim no effect of our own until the Alachua pilot produces one.

the lines we don’t cross

1. 01. No money from bail bond agents, referral networks, or phone and commissary vendors, ever.
2. 02. Never collects names, case numbers, or the content of questions.
3. 03. Never discusses the facts of anyone’s case.
4. 04. Never shows a fact as verified until a human has actually confirmed it.
5. 05. Never sells anyone on “fewer calls” as a promised outcome.