Please download our Defender Resources Publications Catalog for a complete listing of NLADA's standards and publications.

Defense-Initiated Victim Outreach: Defense Attorney Manual (pdf, 1 Mb) DIVO is a process by which victims and survivors of crime may, if they choose, access the defense attorney or defense team through a trained Victim Outreach Specialist (VOS) in order to attend to needs and interests that can best be addressed by the defense. If the service is desired, the VOS works with the victim survivor, or in the case of a homicide, the family, to identify questions, concerns and needs that can be uniquely addressed by the defense, and communicates those issues to the defense, assisting them, as needed, in formulating a response. Through the VOS the defense then has an opportunity to potentially meet victim survivor needs without compromising the due process rights of the defendant.

Defense-Initiated Victim Outreach: Prosecuting Attorney Manual (pdf, 2 Mb) DIVO is a process by which victims and survivors of crime may, if they choose, access the defense attorney or defense team through a trained Victim Outreach Specialist (VOS) in order to attend to needs and interests that can best be addressed by the defense. If the service is desired, the VOS works with the victim survivor, or in the case of a homicide, the family, to identify questions, concerns and needs that can be uniquely addressed by the defense, and communicates those issues to the defense, assisting them, as needed, in formulating a response. Through the VOS the defense then has an opportunity to potentially meet victim survivor needs without compromising the due process rights of the defendant.

Justice Denied: America’s Continuing Neglect of Our Constitutional Right to Counsel examine the nation's ways of providing defense services for the poor and is sounding the alarm about the grave problems that exist today nationwide. The National Right to Counsel Committee was established to address the full dimension of the difficulties in indigent defense from a national perspective. The Committee's members include persons with judicial, law enforcement, prosecution, and defense experience, as well as policymakers, victim advocates, and scholars. The membership also includes a person who was convicted of a crime that he did not commit, sent to prison, and later exonerated due to DNA evidence. The report released by The Constitution Project on Tuesday, April 14, 2009, details the endemic and systemic failures of the indigent defense system and recommends twenty-two specific and urgently needed reforms to fix them.

Making the Case: Utilizing Performance Measurement to Promote Holistic Advocacy and Community Oriented-Defense explores the question of how does one develop performance measures that are relevant and appropriate to the public defense, human service delivery context of Holistic Community-Oriented Defense programs, while also being responsive to policymaker decision-making paradigms? This publication test a specific research hypothesis that community-oriented defense services that address a breadth of client problems (a) produce better life outcomes, (b) prevent recidivism, (c) reduce crime and enhance public safety, and (d) achieve these goals in a cost-effective fashion. The Holistic and Community-Oriented Defense Project of NLADA was funded by a grant from the Open Society Institute. [This publication is only available in hardcopy. One hardcopy is available to NLADA members only. Please add the title of this publication to your order form.]

Seroton in Deficit and Impulsive Violence: Does Your Case Fit?, by Dr. Paul Rossby, Ph.D. In order to appreciate the critical differences in brain chemistry that can lead to seemingly inexplicable acts of cruelty, it is necessary to have a basic understanding of the brain itself, the organ of behavior. This article discusses the criteria which indicate that an analysis of serotonin function is warranted in order to assess the defendant’s biological capacity to control his impulses. From the Fall 2003 issue of Cornerstone

Mental Retardation: A Primer to Cope with Expert Testimony, by Dr. I. Bruce Frumkin. With increasing frequency, attorneys in civil and criminal cases litigate issues involving intellectual functioning. As with all forensic assessments in the civil context, no IQ or diagnosis automatically renders an individual incompetent to execute a will, to consent to treatment, to manage one’s affairs, or to be caretaker for a minor. Often, a comprehensive assessment of a client’s intellectual functioning is needed to litigate a variety of these issues. From the Fall 2003 issue of Cornerstone.

Reentry—the Tie That Binds Legal Aid Attorneys and Public Defenders, by Cynthia Works, NLADA's director of training and education, this article address a number of reentry questions, including: What does the term “reentry” mean? Whose responsibility is it to serve these clients —civil legal aid attorneys or public defenders? Moreover, why should civil legal aid attorneys and public defenders be concerned about the hundreds of thousands of ex-offenders returning to their communities each year? This article was first published in Clearinghouse Review, 37 Clearinghouse Rev. 328 (Sept.-Oct. 2003)

Raising Voices: Taking Public Defense to the Streets a monograph from The Brennan Center on how community-oriented defense improves client representation and builds support for defense funding.

What Policymakers Need to Know To Improve Public Defense Systems is the second in a series of papers developed by the Executive Session on Public Defense at Harvard (January 2002)

View list of all Publications

Documents linked from this page are in the PDF format and require the free Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view or print them. Click to download the Acrobat Reader software.