Strategic innovations
Efforts to improve juvenile indigent defense system policies or practices
The work of the Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network (JIDAN) will be pursued through Strategic Innovation Groups (SIGs) whose members include juvenile defense attorneys, prosecutors, legislators, grant makers, juvenile justice experts, academicians, policymakers, judges, and other stakeholders. Group members, through their collaborative efforts, identify critical issues in juvenile indigent defense; pinpoint discrete intervention points; prescribe targeted recommendations; and propose concrete action steps designed to produce measurable change in one year. The work of JIDAN's Strategic Innovation Groups is conducted in the areas of providing meaningful access to counsel, and developing juvenile indigent defense resource centers.
Meaningful Access to Counsel
The Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network focuses on access to counsel issues through three intervention points: 1) appointment of counsel; 2) post-disposition legal advocacy; and 3) attorney qualifications and performance.
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Immediate appointment to counsel
Immediate appointment of counsel is critical to ensuring that youth make informed choices from their first point of contact with the juvenile justice system, when many decisions that can potentially determine the direction of the case are made. Once appointed, defense counsel has an ethical obligation to provide the youth with holistic legal advice that is responsive to the youth’s expressed interests and the youth’s social, educational, and other ancillary legal needs.
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Post-disposition representation
Disposition does not signal the end of a young person’s need for defense counsel. In fact, probation or commitment to a facility are crucial times when youth require consistent, client-centered intervention to monitor the conditions of the youth’s confinement, to ensure that the youth receives the rehabilitative services that the state has ordered, to represent youth at institutional disciplinary or parole board hearings, and to facilitate the youth’s seamless transition back into the community. Without competent counsel at every stage of the legal process, including post-disposition, youth may be deprived of fundamental legal protections, and needlessly suffer any number of serious and lifelong consequences attendant to juvenile adjudications. Competent and well-resourced defense counsel file motions requesting early release in appropriate cases, better educational, vocational, and other services, and expungement, as well as increase appellate or habeas filings in cases of legal error.
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Attorney qualifications and performance
Juvenile indigent defense is a complex, specialized area of practice. Mounting a vigorous legal defense in juvenile cases requires all the courtroom skills applied in adult criminal bench trials, plus knowledge of juvenile statutory and case law, child and adolescent development, mental health law, special education law, immigration law, and other ancillary areas of law that affect juvenile clients in ways that might impact their standing in their delinquency case. Competent juvenile defense attorneys also understand the strengths and needs of their juvenile clients and of their clients’ families, communities, and other social structures in a way that adult criminal defense attorneys need not. Development of defense competency hinges on specialized training tailored to juvenile delinquency practice, mentoring, and the promulgation and implementation of performance-based standards, court rules, practice guidelines and other tools that ensure effective legal advocacy.
Juvenile Indigent Defense Resource Centers
Excellence in juvenile defense is inextricably linked to defense attorneys having the capacity, expertise, and resources necessary to provide targeted juvenile specific defense strategies. To that end, the JIDAN will create Juvenile Defender Resource Centers to provide juvenile defense attorneys across the country with opportunities for leadership, education, training, and mentoring. Through these centers, the JIDAN will build a national network of reformers dedicated to enhancing the level of juvenile indigent defense practice through the dissemination of information on best practices and promising innovations, and committed to introducing the juvenile indigent defense perspective into the public policy debate concerning how our society should treat children accused of crimes.
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Technical support
Juvenile Defender Resource Centers will create an infrastructure, virtual or otherwise, offering resources, advocacy, policy development, and technical support to improve the quality of juvenile defense. The centers will develop and provide training curricula, motions banks, listservs, data and case management innovations, and a variety of supportive services that will serve as a forum for juvenile indigent defense attorneys to share knowledge, improve their skills, and draw strength from the juvenile indigent defense community. The centers will also collect and disseminate information about best practices, promising new approaches and innovations in juvenile indigent defense. Finally, the centers will encourage defense participation in proceedings before high-level state entities, on boards and commissions, and in legislative hearings and other advocacy efforts, to promote sound public policy that includes consideration of the juvenile indigent defense perspective.
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Community-building
Juvenile Defender Resource Centers will engage law schools, universities, law firms, and bar associations to build a cadre of experts who support juvenile indigent defense systemic reform. This community will focus on barriers to quality defense representation and flag problems that contribute to inconsistent representation across jurisdictions. Especially in smaller and more rural communities where access to counsel tends to be more limited, the resource centers will make a concerted effort to reach out to rural and court-appointed defense counsel not connected to public defender agencies. The resource centers will partner with other juvenile justice system stakeholders, including prosecutors, judges, and probation officers, and with the non-legal community, including parents, to foster a better understanding of the role of the defense attorney in juvenile cases. Ultimately, the resource centers will help to build the capacity and voice of the juvenile defender in service to their young clients.
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Technology
To promote the efficient and wise use of limited resources, Juvenile Defender Resource Centers will champion technology to help build the capacity of the juvenile defense bar.