Documentary record Bound by Fear

Support the project

Every record here cost something to get.

This archive contains 1,117 core records selected under the published authority-nexus criterion. 1,071 are recorded as criminal convictions; charges, civil findings and official findings remain separately labeled. Maintaining that distinction requires court records, translation and archival access.

Toward 1,500 records

1,408 / 1,500

92 records to go. Each one is a court judgment, an appellate disposition or an official finding read in full before it is written up — which is what the money on this page pays for. A milestone is a measure of work done, not of harm in the world: the archive grows where records are published, and the Data Bias page sets out where it cannot see.

What a contribution pays for

$15

Pulls a court record

Most US federal dockets bill per page. A single opinion, with its appellate history, is roughly this.

Give

Most common

$40

Certifies a disputed translation

Machine translation reads most judgments here and is used routinely. It cannot be cited when a conviction turns on a contested term, and it cannot be relied on for the languages where it is weakest. This pays a human translator where the record has to hold.

Give

$120

Opens a blocked archive

Paywalled newspaper morgues and national court databases that publish decisions only behind a subscription.

Give

Any

Choose your own

Any amount, one time or monthly.

Give

What your contribution funds

The long-term aim is a versioned public dataset with field-level citations, documented inclusion decisions and downloadable releases. Here are the milestones.

  1. Milestone 01 — reached July 2026

    1,000 / 1117 core records held

    A stable schema, published codebook and exploratory releases with explicit coverage limits. Every core record passed the published criterion. The count includes separately labeled convictions, charges, civil findings and official findings; unresolved allegations are not presented as findings of guilt.

  2. Milestone 02

    5,000

    The first analysis-ready release, subject to coverage and data-quality review.

  3. Milestone 03

    20,000-30,000

    A basis for carefully controlled cross-national and multilevel analysis.

  4. Stretch goal

    50,000-100,000

    Long-tail analysis and full on-site interactive exploration, with documented version history.

Where it goes

  • Court-record retrieval fees, which are charged per document in most jurisdictions.
  • Human translation where machine translation is not good enough — contested legal terms a record turns on, and the languages where automated output is least reliable. Machine translation does the routine reading and is why the archive reaches as many jurisdictions as it does.
  • Subscription access to paywalled legal databases and newspaper archives.
  • Hosting, and the engineering time to keep the archive standing and searchable.

Read this before you give

This is not a registered charity, and your contribution is not tax-deductible. Bound by Fear is an independent project, not a 501(c)(3) and not a fiscally sponsored one. Money given here supports the work directly. No part of it is a charitable donation for tax purposes, and you should not treat it as one.

Nothing here is a service for survivors. This archive is not a helpline, legal service or counseling provider. If you need support, see the organizations listed on the Resources page.

Funding does not influence the record. No contribution buys the inclusion, exclusion, framing or removal of any case. The criterion and the evidence tiers are published in full on the Method page, including the archive's known gaps and where it could be wrong.

Convictions
96%
Sourced citations
2,392
Corpus records
1,408
Years covered
1819–2026