Summary
The user is looking for assistance in building an Airbyte connector for the DOJ’s press release API to gather data for a prison reform data analytics project. The project involves examining compliance with the First Step Act by the Bureau of Prisons and building an inventory of federal inmates.
Question
greetings airbyte! 
anyone want to help me on a prison reform data analytics project? Specifically, assist me in building an airbyte connector for the <https://www.justice.gov/developer/api-documentation/api_v1|DOJ’s press release API>?
i am contributing to an american nonprofit initiative tied to measuring the effectiveness and compliance of new prison reform laws (specifically <https://www.bop.gov/inmates/fsa/|the first step act>). we are working to examine <The First Step Act: Ending Mass Incarceration in Federal Prisons – The Sentencing Project well the bureau of prisons is complying with fsa guidelines> - and the first step of this work is to build as comprehensive an inventory of current federal inmates as possible.
is there anyone who would like to join me as I put together an airbyte connector for the <https://www.justice.gov/developer/api-documentation/api_v1|DOJ’s press release API>? a typical request to this api looks like this: https://www.justice.gov/api/v1/press_releases.json?pagesize=50&page=0&sort=changed&direction=DESC
i’ve got the nlp chops to extract party names, ages, locations, case events (indictments/pleas/case dispositions/sentencing), charges, etc…Believe it or not, there is no openly available API to retrieve this type of case disposition data.
from this data I plan to then:
- <Inmate Locator inmate lookups> using each prisoner’s name/age to find their BOP
inmateNum - <Inmate Locator data on known inmates><Inmate Locator (using the BOP ID)> on a cadence to examine whether the inmate’s
projRelDateis reflective of our forecast of FSA time credits they would have earned so far (based upon <Federal Register :: FSA Time Credits guidelines>, <Federal Register :: Good Conduct Time Credit Under the First Step Act published rules on the subject>, type of offense, a handful of assumptions, etc…) - poll the doj press release site to discover new inmates as they move through the federal court system. i do not believe there is a method to request records published after a certain date. the best i can think right now to support incremental sync is to <https://www.justice.gov/api/v1/press_releases.json?pagesize=50&page=0&fields=uuid,date,created,changed&parameters=[date]=1231243200|return results on or after a specific date> (it would be ideal if we could use the
changedfield to refresh our records vsdate, but those timestamps are down to the actual second and I was unable to get wildcards to work)
i’m sure there are easier ways of bringing this data into my pipeline - but i wanted to take the opportunity to learn more about airbyte (especially because of its vast connector ecosystem, i think it will be useful for other planned components of the project).
Payment:
• I could probably get you a small stipend funded out of my own wallet
• barter nlp/ml work
• become a larger contributor to the project (it’s called wise first step, nothing has been published as of yet…press release will likely be coming from <https://www.law.gwu.edu/center-law-and-technology|gw law> + <https://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/|nw law> by march 1-15 
)
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