LJC in Caddo Parish

Download the "Slipping Through the Cracks" Report

The Community Defense Project seeks to improve the quality of public defense and court outcomes for clients by building strong relationships between community service providers and the Caddo Parish Office of the Public Defender. Further, the Caddo Community Defense Project leverages local resources to “break the cycle” and support defendants’ efforts to be healthy, engaged members of the community. In January 2008, LJC hired a Shreveport-based social worker as Community Defense Liaison for the Caddo Community Defense Project. This project seeks to realize all of the recommendations of the Brennan Center for Justice “The Case for Community Defense” report (released December 2006).

The Community Defense Liaison builds relationships between area social service providers and the public defender office in order to better help the clients they often both serve. By looking at the client’s needs holistically, the Community Defense Liaison provides critical information to the client’s attorney and plays a fully integrated role in undertaking assessments, developing referral recommendations, crafting treatment plans and providing other direct service. The work-product of the LJC social worker addresses the social service needs of select clients so that they do not cycle back and forth through the criminal justice system.

By aggressively addressing unmet social service needs, the community defense model increases public safety and decreases criminal justice costs while supporting individuals and their families to become healthy members of our community.

“Community Defenders” recognize that an individual’s first contact with the criminal justice system offers a rare moment in which to address many of that individual’s most salient needs, including those that lie outside of the immediate realm of the legal system. Community defenders advocate on behalf of their clients as a collective constituency, and through advocacy and systemic reforms attempt to improve the social standing of the community from which many of their clients come, and to which many return.

In addition to direct service, the Caddo Community Defense Project is also committed to the following projects:

• Conducting intensive psych-social assessments of 100 adult pre-trial prisoners at Caddo Correctional Center and releasing a report on findings
• Developing innovative, holistic, training programs for both the adult and juvenile divisions within the Caddo Parish Office of the Public Defender in collaboration with local experts/advocates and consistent with national best practice standards
• Supporting public defender participation in the MacArthur Models for Change Project in Caddo Parish
• Researching social service resources for public defenders and clients and building relationships and resources between organizations/agencies
• Publishing a guide to the “collateral consequences” of a conviction and advocating for programs and policies that support community reentry
• Maintaining a comprehensive media archive of all related film, radio and print coverage of issues related to public defense services in Caddo Parish
• Transforming defender culture to create an example of client-centered, holistic, community defense in Caddo Parish to promote to other districts in Louisiana

 

Links:

The Brennan Center Recommendations for Community Defense are available here: Brennan Center Recommendations

Press-link: "Community Defense Links Public with Justice System" New Orleans City Business April 7, 2008

Press-link: "Social Services for Inmates Could Reduce Crime" Shreveport Times July 30, 2008

Report: “Slipping Through the Cracks: A survey of 100 pre-trial prisoners at Caddo Correctional Center”:
Slipping Through the Cracks

The Caddo Community Defense Project is principally supported by the Charles T. Beaird Foundation in Shreveport, LA, online at: www.beairdfoundation.org