This project is a collaboration between Center for Spatial Research and  Columbia Law School- Cities of Bail. Our work is to design and build a interactive data visualization website for showing bail bonds over 20 years in 5 American cities. The visualization is to investigate how bail bonds affect the make up of American communities, and find which communities are targeted by bail companies.

The bail bond liens datasets have various dimensions, including the amount of the liens, the time they were signed, and their status (whether foreclosed or released). It is crucial to systematically arrange this information for clear presentation with the integration of demographic data—such as race, poverty levels, and housing prices—into the background map for a comprehensive analysis.

We design the interactive map interface to have timeline bar at the bottom for people to select year to see the data. On the right, a dropdown menu presents bond information and a legend to filter liens (dots on the map). Additionally, checkboxes are available for users to select various demographic information layers to overlay on the map.

We designed a binary map feature for users to select and compare two demographic information layers simultaneously, facilitating an analysis of their interaction.