#315 Parking Tickets and Bankruptcy

ProPublica Illinois has been reporting all year on how unpaid parking tickets have pushed tens of thousands of mostly black motorists into bankruptcy. It’s something that, by all accounts, is happening nowhere else in the country. Data helped ProPublica tell these stories - and there is still more reporting to do. In recent months ProPublica has been collaborating with Elliott Ramos from WBEZ on stories about duplicative ticketing and unequal enforcement.

Melissa Sanchez and David Eads of ProPublica Illinois will talk about the reporting and getting the data, including how they obtained an exemption to access federal bankruptcy court records and scrape information on tens of thousands of consumer bankruptcies. They will share some of the challenges they faced, and the logic behind the decisions and analyses they made. In addition to bankruptcy case data, they used more than a decade’s worth of ticketing data from the city of Chicago, American Community Survey data and license suspension data from the Illinois Secretary of State.

In advance of this talk, there is data on some 28 million parking and vehicle compliance tickets posted on ProPublcica’s web site.

RSVP required Braintree now requires all attendees to RSVP beforehand. Walk-ins will not be allowed!

ASL This event will have an American Sign Language interpreter.

Food Food and drinks will be provided. We encourage attendees to bring their own water bottles to reduce waste.