American Equity and Justice Group

After experiencing incarceration firsthand, Anthony Powers found his mission: advocating for justice reform. With support from Microsoft’s Global Hackathon, Powers founded the American Equity and Justice Group (AEJG) and developed a groundbreaking data dashboard highlighting racial disparities in sentencing and convictions.

At the 2021 Garage Hackathon, a diverse team of Microsoft employees built the prototype, “Bringing Equity to the Justice System.” Their project won two prestigious awards—Executive Challenge Winner for Hack for Society and Sponsored Challenge Winner for Hack for Justice Reform.

Leveraging publicly available felony case data, the AEJG dashboard offers accessible visualizations broken down by decision makers, counties, and demographics. “When we first accessed this data, it was full of inconsistencies—from paper-to-digital conversion errors to discrepancies in county reporting. Cleaning and structuring it has been one of our greatest challenges, but also one of our proudest achievements,” said Rachel Hacker, Principal Data Scientist.

Utilizing Microsoft technologies like Azure, Power BI, and GitHub, the project embodies Microsoft’s mission to empower everyone. It also aligns with Microsoft’s Racial Equity Initiative, demonstrating how technology can drive systemic change. Reflecting on the project’s debut, Ed Essey, Senior Director of Business Value, said, “It was such an impactful moment when I saw the project demo for the first time in front of the community of lawmakers, citizens, judges, and legal professionals.”