We design the
open future.
A small studio inside Open Ladder building experimental interfaces, data visualizations, and public tools at the intersection of justice and technology.
A small studio inside Open Ladder building experimental interfaces, data visualizations, and public tools at the intersection of justice and technology.
Current experiments
A timeline surface for making administrative decisions legible without turning people into spectacle.
County-level patterns for advocates who need a fast read. Sentencing-volume index, twelve counties, one shared scale, 2014–2024.
Each line shares one 0–100 scale. Wayne (ember) is the peak county. Illustrative of the small-multiples surface; full data below.
| County | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wayne (peak) | 88 | 90 | 87 | 84 | 80 | 76 | 70 | 66 | 69 | 72 | 74 |
| Oakland | 44 | 45 | 43 | 42 | 40 | 38 | 35 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 |
| Macomb | 41 | 42 | 42 | 40 | 39 | 37 | 34 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| Kent | 38 | 39 | 40 | 39 | 37 | 35 | 33 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 |
| Genesee | 34 | 35 | 34 | 33 | 32 | 30 | 28 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| Washtenaw | 22 | 23 | 22 | 21 | 20 | 19 | 18 | 17 | 18 | 18 | 19 |
| Ingham | 24 | 25 | 24 | 23 | 22 | 21 | 19 | 18 | 19 | 19 | 20 |
| Kalamazoo | 21 | 22 | 21 | 20 | 19 | 18 | 17 | 16 | 17 | 17 | 18 |
| Saginaw | 20 | 21 | 20 | 19 | 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 16 | 16 | 17 |
| Ottawa | 16 | 17 | 17 | 16 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 15 |
| Muskegon | 18 | 19 | 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 14 | 14 | 15 |
| Berrien | 17 | 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 13 | 13 | 14 |
A humane “what would my life look like?” tool for planning after release.
Engineering inquiries
Commissioned public-interest software.
Open Ladder Studio focuses on commissioned engineering for nonprofits and reform projects. For the open-source projects, see openladder.tech.