Brennan Center for Justice

Community-Oriented Defense Fact Sheet

Prepared by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

(February 2002)

What is Community-Oriented Defense:

Defenders across the country are stepping out of the courtroom to work in new and creative ways with the communities from which their clients come. Community-oriented defenders are drawing on the resources and expertise of communities to make neighborhoods safe and the system more just. They are also working with community-based networks and providers to ensure lasting results for clients in individual cases. Community-oriented defenders are playing a vital role in efforts to prevent recurring cycles of crime through education and the development of strong collaborative community networks.

The Current Trend:

Communities that were once complacent have now begun to object to their virtual exclusion from criminal justice decision-making that directly affects them. “Community policing” and “community prosecution” initiatives have been taking shape largely in response to community concerns. To their credit, lawmakers have recognized the value of these efforts and ensured their expansion by providing needed financial support.

But for all its importance, many lawmakers have missed that community-oriented defense has begun to emerge as a critical final component in the process of increasing community engagement in the criminal justice system. Community-oriented defenders are actively collaborating with communities to create safe neighborhoods and to ensure fairness in our system of justice. Indeed, their work has closed a critical gap. In their interaction with communities, defenders can often gain access to communities broader in scope than those which the police or prosecutors might tap.

The Brennan Center recently surveyed defenders across the country to determine the extent to which they were connected to the communities in which they operate. Some 127 defenders - almost 15% - responded to the survey. Of those:

• 90% report that they speak at community forums;
• 55% report they are currently engaged in collaboration with community residents and concerned citizens in their jurisdiction on policy or systemic issues;
• 85% said community collaboration was an important aspect of their practice, with 18% calling it essential.

Providing support for this emerging defender orientation is critical. Last year Senator Biden’s proposed legislation to fund expansion of community policing and community prosecution programs (S924) omitted funding for community defense initiatives. Given the trends - and given the stakes of making the entire system more responsive to community concerns and calls for fairness - law makers should include defender organizations in any efforts to integrate community experience and expertise into the justice system.

Select Examples of Community-Oriented Defense in Action:

• In Chicago, First Defense Legal Aid operates a community based branch office called Project Legal Eagle to serve the particularized needs of the Englewood community. An FDLA staff attorney gives presentations at high schools and attends meetings with community, political, and religious leaders. A local organizer works with FDLA on Project Legal Eagle as a community liaison, spreading information about legal services to the youth community and advising FDLA as it cultivates community relationships.
• The King County - Seattle Public Defender operates a Racial Disparity Project in its office. After police detained, questioned and frisked a group of Asian-American kids simply crossing the street, tensions increased. Parents and the broader Asian-American community sought support from the public defender’s office. As an outgrowth of this collaboration, one of the Asian-American activists working with the defender’s office eventually joined the city’s Racial Profiling Citizen Taskforce charged with collecting racial profiling data and crafting policy recommendations for the city council. As a result of this collaboration between the defenders and the Asian-American community, an important new dimension has been added to communications between the largest group of color in Seattle and the police.
• In Phoenix, Arizona, the Maricopa County Public Defender (MCPD) participates in the Booker T. Washington Headstart Program’s Family Literacy Project. That project helps parents make reading with their children an integral part of their families and helps preschool children develop a love for books. MCPD provides resources and speakers for a monthly “Family Literacy Day.” It has distributed free books to the children and their families, and provided speakers on topics like fire safety, tobacco awareness and stress management.

Community-oriented Defenders Work with Community Resources Like These:

• Schools
• Churches
• Parents
• Homeless advocacy groups
• Neighborhood empowerment groups
• Mental health Advocates
• Social services Agencies
• Drug and alcohol treatment facilities
• Task forces on criminal justice - around issues like police accountability, racial profiling, general criminal justice reform, youth justice reform
• Bar associations
• Probation services
• Race relations councils
• Anti-truancy campaigns
• Restorative justice committees
• Re-entry programs

Source: Brennan Center for Justice “Connections to Community Survey” (2001).