What is JUSTFAIR?
The JUdicial System Transparency for Fairness through Archived Inferred Records (JUSTFAIR) State research lab actively works to expose federal judiciary sentencing disparities work in each state. Already our lab has grown from three – Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Virginia – to eight states, including Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana, and North Carolina. As we continue to develop our methodology and model to ask and answer questions about sentencing behaviors at the state level, where the vast majority of sentencing decisions are made, we hope to expand so all 50 US states are held to the same level of accountability.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia established that U.S. criminal courtrooms are constitutionally open to the public, theoretically allowing insight into individual judges’ sentencing decisions. However, the government’s public-facing sentencing data does not disclose the identity of presiding judges, creating a gap in transparency around judicial accountability. To address this gap, JUSTFAIR has created the first database of federal criminal sentences that identifies sentencing judges, which includes cases handled by Trump-appointed judges. These data enable the first analysis of sentencing patterns by appointing a president, demonstrating how presidential judicial philosophies influence sentencing practices and potential racial biases exhibited under each administration. By linking administrative records, we re-identified judges for over 137,000 cases from 2018 to 2023, focusing on a subset of over 73,000 cases where judges exercised blatant discretion.
Our Cost of Discretion project has identified the 14 most carceral judges in New York City. Estimated impact over 2.5 years: an extra 580 people jailed, 154 years of jail time, and $77 million in costs borne by New York taxpayers. Read the report.
You can also read our initial report JUSTFAIR: Judicial System Transparency through Federal Archive Inferred Records here.
If you’re interested in learning more, reach out to JUSTFAIR Director Chad Topaz.
Meet our Team!
JUSTFAIR Director & QSIDE Co-Founder, Chad Topaz.
Chad Topaz (he/him), Professor of Mathematics, is an applied mathematician and data scientist at Williams College. Chad received his AB in applied mathematics from Harvard University and his PhD in applied mathematics from Northwestern University. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation since 2006 and his work at the intersection of social justice and quantitative approaches has been covered in The Atlantic, The Guardian, Hyperallergic, MIT Technology Review, Nonprofit Quarterly, Smithsonian Magazine and numerous other outlets. Passionate about scientific communication and discourse, Chad has delivered over 160 talks at colleges, universities, and scientific meetings. His research honors include a New Directions Research Professorship at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, the Outstanding Paper Award of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, a Board of Trustees Award from Macalester College, and a Kavli Frontiers Fellowship from the National Academy of Sciences. A passionate advocate for inclusive classrooms, Chad won UCLA’s Sorgenfrey Distinguished Teaching Award in Mathematics and Macalester College’s Rossmann Excellence in Teaching Award. You can follow him on Bluesky Social @chadtopaz.bsky.social.