Community Responsive Public Defense

This colloquium Essay surfaces the work of four innovative indigent defense organizations that are engaged with and duty-bound to the communities they represent. I call this “community responsive public defense,” which is a distinct model of indigent defense whereby public defenders look to their clients and their clients’ communities to help shape advocacy, strategy, and representation. Embracing the theme of this colloquium, this Essay situates community responsive defense within the context of increased public awareness of criminal injustice and collective action against mass incarceration. <br><br>Methodologically, this Essay relies on qualitative interviews with leaders of four indigent defense organizations engaged in community responsive advocacy. These leaders represent different types of indigent defense organizations: Still She Rises Tulsa (SSRT), a privately funded nonprofit that offers indigent defense and related services to women who are mothers in North Tulsa; the Nashville Metropolitan Public Defender’s Office (Nashville Defenders), a publicly funded government agency that provides defense services to indigent people in Davidson County, Tennessee; the Black Public Defender Association (BPDA), a membership-based organization that seeks to improve the quality of indigent defense through maintaining a network of community-engaged Black public defenders; and the Neighborhood Defender Service of Detroit (NDS Detroit), a publicly funded nonprofit that secured a contract to deliver defense services to indigent people in Wayne County, Michigan.<br><br>All indigent defense providers have a duty to work with and on behalf of the communities in which they are situated. These efforts are not ancillary to individual client representation, but rather, integral to effective advocacy and critical to shrinking the carceral system and its impact on marginalized people.