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NLADA Evaluation of Orleans Parish, LouisianaThe National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA) has released its comprehensive proposal for the Louisiana criminal justice system, “A Strategic Plan to Ensure Accountability & Protect Fairness in Louisiana’s Criminal Courts.” Commissioned by the Louisiana State Bar Association (LSBA) and the Louisiana Bar Foundation (LBF), the report focuses on New Orleans’ system for providing legal representation to low-income people charged with crimes. The report concludes that the New Orleans indigent defense crisis cannot be fixed without comprehensive statewide reform and set out a step-by-step blue print for legislative action in the 2007 Legislative session. The Louisiana Bar released the report on Friday, September 22nd. This report, which was spurred by the dire conditions New Orleans’ indigent defense system, is the second Louisiana report NLADA has conducted in as many years. In March 2004, NLADA released an assessment of trial-level indigent defense services in Avoyelles Parish, commissioned by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. That report concluded that Louisiana failed to protect the right to counsel because of two main deficiencies: a) inadequate funding, and, b) a lack of adherence to national standards of justice including the American Bar Association’s Ten Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System. Much of the information that was gathered for the earlier report was used as a reference in understanding the larger problems that afflicted the Louisiana justice system prior to the 2005 hurricane season. “The aspect of the criminal justice system which provides legal representation to those who cannot afford it has been dramatically under-funded in Louisiana for years. Lawyers, judges and law enforcement have managed meager resources as well as they could, but Katrina revealed that the struggle was a losing battle. No one component of the criminal justice system is at fault, but the NLADA report confirms that we are indeed in a crisis,” said LSBA President Marta-Ann Schnabel. Given the desire to create an atmosphere in which serious debate can occur around the NLADA recommendations, the State Bar elected to release the report without a lot of fanfare, opting instead to do a general release and get it into the hands of key criminal justice stakeholders and policy-makers expediently. “After spending a significant amount of time in Louisiana, I am optimistic that the people of Louisiana will create a public defense system that protects everybody’s right to the effective assistance of counsel and a fair day in court no matter their economic standing," said David Carroll, NLADA director of research & evaluations. "No one is talking about rebuilding a failed system. Instead, I have heard time and again that people are looking forward and using the catastrophe of Katrina as an opportunity to fix long-standing deficiencies.”
The National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA), founded in 1911, is the oldest and largest national, nonprofit membership organization devoting all of its resources to advocating equal access to justice for all Americans. NLADA champions effective legal assistance for people who cannot afford counsel, serves as a collective voice for both civil legal services and public defense services throughout the nation and provides a wide range of services and benefits to its individual and organizational members. |
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© Copyright, 2004
National Legal Aid & Defender Association,
1140 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 900, Washington, DC 20036
(Phone) 202.452.0620 | (Fax) 202.872.1031 |
info@nlada.org
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