Tag: public defense

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The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) Turns 40

Last week, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) celebrated their 40th anniversary. Members of the Racial and Ethnic Disparities Initiative (REDI) team at American University (AU)–Matt Collinson, Preeti Menon, and I–travelled to the U.S. Department of Justice to share in this historic occasion. We were surrounded by staff, partners, and grantees who have been essential in executing BJA’s mission of making communities safer and creating a more equitable criminal justice system. Hearing about the successes BJA has had over the years was inspiring, such as advancements in training, guidelines, and practices for the areas of law enforcement, courts, and reducing violent crime. At the ceremony, there was a video presentation that highlighted many of BJA’s accomplishments, including the creation of the Drug Courts Program Office in 1995, which awarded jurisdictions and court systems funding to establish drug courts through the Drug Court Discretionary Grant Program.

Attending this event gave me the valuable opportunity to reflect on the decades-long partnership between BJA and AU. Over the past 30 years, AU has partnered with BJA on several initiatives such as Drug Treatment Courts, Right to Counsel, Criminal Courts Technical Assistance Project, Differentiated Case Management Program, Pandemic Influenza Preparedness for Courts, Project Safe Neighborhoods, and numerous justice roundtables.

Specifically, this anniversary brings to mind where my journey with AU and BJA started, and where it may take me next. I vividly remember that day in 2017 when I was invited to interview for a research position at the Justice Programs Office (currently Justice Initiatives) housed in the School of Public Affairs (SPA) at AU. I hopped in a car and drove from my home state of Delaware to the District of Columbia. During the interview, I learned about the National Drug Court Resource Center (NDCRC), which was a multi-year project funded by BJA. NDCRC’s deliverables involved hosting interactive webinars, producing podcast episodes, conducting trainings at conferences, publishing research in the Drug Court Review, and administering the national treatment court survey. Overall, the mission of NDCRC was to provide resources and research to help treatment courts run more effectively. After the meeting, I felt confident that this would be a great opportunity for me, as I would be joining a team that was passionate about making the justice system more equitable for all. Sure enough, a short time later I officially started working at AU as a member of the NDCRC team. Below are a few NDCRC project highlights:

On my second day at AU, I attended the Right to Counsel (R2C) National Consortium’s Third Annual Meeting. BJA sponsored the Right to Counsel National Campaign (a campaign designed to raise awareness about the importance of effective defense counsel representation, as an important factor in ensuring equity in the system). At this annual meeting, there was a fireside chat between AU’s Senior Policy Counsel, Zoe Root, and Tracey Sewell, a former client and a survivor of human trafficking. Zoe, a former public defender at the Bronx defenders, represented Tracey and filed a successful motion to vacate Tracey’s 31 convictions that she accrued at the hands of her traffickers. Tracey shared how having an effective public defender helped her get back on the right track in life, including having her criminal record expunged, so that she could obtain better employment opportunities. I was able to witness first-hand the necessity and power of the Sixth Amendment and R2C’s achievements, including:

The last BJA-funded project that will be spotlighted is the Racial and Ethnic Disparities Initiative (REDI). In the spring of 2022, I received a phone call from Preeti about the news of a BJA open solicitation called Field Initiated: Encouraging Innovation. After our chat, we knew this would be a perfect chance for us to scale up our RED work in treatment courts at a national level. We applied and waited several months to find out about a decision. In September of that year, Preeti and I were both on campus preparing for a documentary screening and a panel discussion about the Definition of Insanity and she checked her phone and received an email notifying us that we had been awarded the funding! Preeti and I were ecstatic that this grant would allow us to work with treatment courts to increase access, enhance retention, and improve overall program satisfaction for minoritized treatment court participants. Here are a few project milestones:

In a world that is always on the move, it is important to pause and soak in what has been accomplished. I am grateful for the opportunity to celebrate BJA’s 40th anniversary alongside the REDI team and reflect on the partnership BJA and AU have maintained over the years. I am looking forward to many more years of collaboration as we strive to create safer communities and a more equitable criminal justice system.   

To learn more about BJA’s 40th anniversary, visit here.

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Women Helped Shape Public Defense — and Now Need it More Than Ever

Clara Shortridge Foltz
Clara Shortridge Foltz photo credit Los Angeles Public Library

March is Women’s History Month and March 18th is Gideon’s Day, the 57th anniversary of the landmark case Gideon v. Wainwright that solidified the right to counsel for individuals whose liberty is at stake and who cannot afford an attorney. These commemorations have more in common than first meets the eye: women have had a distinct hand in the creation and strengthening of our public defense system, and women are increasingly in need of effective public defense themselves.

Clara Shortridge Foltz, the first woman to practice law on the West Coast, is a little-known figure, but we have her to thank for the concept of our modern public defender system. Due to the fact that defendants with means would rarely agree to female representation, Foltz represented quite a few indigent defendants. Dissatisfied with the inequities she observed, Foltz presented the idea of public defense at the Chicago World’s Fair, arguing that the right to a presumption of innocence was only possible with competent legal advice. Due to her efforts, Los Angeles opened the nation’s first public defender office in 1913, and the “Foltz Defender Bill” was enacted state-wide in 1921.

While Clara Shortridge Foltz was the first woman to play an important role in American public defense, she was not the last. Here in Washington, DC there is a local legacy of female public defense leaders. In 1968, Barbara Babcock—who later wrote Foltz’s biography—became the first director of DC’s nascent Public Defender Service (PDS), a gold standard for public defender offices in the US. PDS’s trailblazing legacy continued when Cheryl Long became the nation’s first African American woman to direct a public defender office in 1985. PDS’s current director, Avis E. Buchanan, is also an African American woman. She has received multiple awards for her leadership over the past 16 years and in 2015, the Washingtonian recognized Buchanan as one of the city’s most powerful women.

Women—and particularly women of color—remain a minority in many areas of the law today, however. Prosecutor data paints a grim picture; even with substantial gains over the past several years, 95 percent of elected prosecutors are white, 76 percent are men, and only two percent are women of color. In the 141 years after Clara Shortridge Foltz was admitted to the California Bar, California is the only state that has approached gender parity, with women making up 44 percent of prosecutors.

Gender disparities exist for people involved in the justice system as well. Today, women are the fastest growing incarcerated population in the country: between 1980 and 2017, the number of women in prison and jail grew by 750 percent, a growth rate twice as high as men’s. Once again, race plays a role: the incarceration rate for African American women is twice that of white women. A recent federal report found disturbing evidence of gender disparities in punishment within prison as well: for the same rule violations, women are disciplined two to three times more often than men. Transgender women are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted by corrections staff than the greater incarcerated population. Unfortunately, women’s incarceration has particularly wide-reaching ripple effects: 80 percent of women in jails are mothers, most of whom are primary caretakers. As the number of incarcerated women rises, these familial consequences multiply.

Effective representation can help counteract these consequences. With roughly four out of five defendants in the US unable to afford a private attorney, this responsibility falls largely on the shoulders of public defense. As the Prison Policy Initiative stressed in their 2018 recommendations to address gender disparities, “Public defense is particularly important for women who have limited financial resources to afford private attorneys.”

There is much to celebrate on the 57th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, including the work of several female public defense pioneers. As we also mark Women’s History Month, however, let’s remember that as we continue to push for an effective and empowered public defense system, women need good public defense more than ever.

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A Vital Takeaway from 2019: Collaboration May Be Our Strongest Tool

People walking on a calendar

As 2019 comes to a close, we reflect on the year’s accomplishments. 2019 is my first year working at the Justice Programs Office and on the Right to Counsel National Campaign (R2C), and I’ve been surprised by the level of collaboration I see between criminal justice stakeholders on the issue of the right to counsel. Perhaps I had low expectations—when your justice system model is called “adversarial,” common goals don’t sound easy to come by—but as I learned more about the repercussions of poor public defense, I began to understand the imperative for collaboration. An effective public defense delivery system helps other parts of the criminal justice system function properly, and many of those who work in this system every day understand that. In terms of meaningful, systemic change, I’m aware that an interest in working together is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s a key start. I’d like to touch on a couple of highlights from 2019 that can inspire us as we move forward.

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Public Defenders are Heroes

JPO Director Kim Ball with Mark Holden at Smart on Crime conference.

Public defenders are heroes. That message rang loud and clear throughout the third annual Smart on Crime Innovations Conference. From opening remarks by John Jay College of Criminal Justice President Karol Mason who explicitly highlighted defenders as criminal justice reform leaders to the plenary session on day two when Mark Holden and Justice Programs Office Director Kim Ball had a passionate conversation about why the Sixth Amendment matters.

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Investing in Equal Access to Quality Public Defense

Stacked office filesLast month, California congresswoman and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris introduced the Ensuring Quality Access to Legal Defense (EQUAL Defense) Act. If passed, the bill would create a $250 million grant program aiming to establish workload limits for public defenders and pay parity between public defenders and prosecutors. The bill would also authorize $5 million to provide training to public defenders.

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In Defense of Public Defense

Gideon Petition for Certiorari
Gideon’s Petition

March 18th marked the 56th anniversary of the landmark US Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright and National Public Defense Day. As a former investigator for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, current project director of the Right to Counsel National Campaign, justice reform advocate, and American citizen, I am proud to celebrate the public defense community and the clients – which could be any of us – they represent. Continue reading “In Defense of Public Defense”

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In Re Gault – Progress or Regression

“The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” – Unknown

christin-hume-588778-unsplash

As I walked into my first (and only!) law class in grad school, there was a quote written on the whiteboard. Our professor looked at us and asked, “How does this apply to our case today?” The case in question was “In re Gault,” the landmark US Supreme Court case which established the right to counsel for juveniles in delinquency cases in 1967. That may have been my only law class, but I continue to grapple with the issues raised by this case through my work training and providing technical assistance to juvenile drug treatment courts. In the 51 years since Gault, we’ve come a long way to ensure justice for youth, but there are still steps we need to take, especially when it comes to the right to counsel.

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Working in Criminal Justice as an International Affairs Student: Understanding the Challenges at Home

Photo of CameronI’ve been working for a little over a year as a student associate at the Justice Programs Office (JPO). Most of my time is taken up by being graduate student at American University’s School of International Service but being a student associate at JPO has been a very rewarding part-time job. As an international affairs student, the daily legal issues I study are very different from those most students who focus on domestic government study. During our studies, we international affairs students observe whether a country adheres to the rule of law or we compare the philosophical underpinnings that countries use in designing legal or governmental systems.   Rarely do we take a deep look at the American legal system or the American criminal justice system. My time here at JPO has built on my personal thoughts about the American criminal justice system and brought them into sharper focus.

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