WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
A foundational principle of the United States’ criminal justice system is that accused persons are innocent unless proven guilty, yet over 555,000 people who are presumed innocent are detained pre-trial. The Constitution requires that people who are too poor to afford an attorney (“indigent”) be provided one, yet in Texas alone, 314,000 people were appointed mere shadows of proper representation last year. Attorneys are being appointed to too many cases to adequately represent their clients, based on well-researched caseload recommendations. Without proper representation, indigent felony accused people will serve on average, an extra 4.33 years of unjust incarceration, totaling 455,267 years of unnecessary incarceration in Texas from just one year of operating the system of overloading court appointments. This system drains our Texas economy, too, by wasting $149 billion per year in incarceration costs.
Most court-appointed attorneys have zero oversight to ensure proper use of funds and quality of service. These attorneys are not trained, have excessive caseloads, and are not provided investigative, expert, or social resources to adequately defend cases, as constitutionally required. They also have an inherent conflict of interest in placing judges’ priorities over their clients’ priorities. All of this is in direct violation of the accused people’s rights. The result is that those who cannot afford an attorney are provided almost no representation at all - their rights are completely ignored, the innocent are wrongfully convicted, and people are sentenced to unnecessarily high incarceration rates.
The ripple effect of this injustice on marginalized communities, racial justice, and government spending is devastating. Society as a whole is harmed from this fear-based overloaded system, too. Judgment feeds dehumanization when incarcerated people are intentionally forgotten, infecting our entire society with the elimination of love. The idea of a “dangerous” human being is wrongfully applied to those most disenfranchised. As 1 Corinthians reminds us: “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.”
What Is Restoring Justice Doing?
Restoring Justice, founded in Houston, TX, exists to ensure that every accused person with needs in America receives their rightful representation. Our organization is evolving to go beyond policy change and focus on indigent defense culture change. Right now, there is no pipeline for passionate law school graduates who want to commit to this work. With your help, we hope to implement a service model by recruiting underutilized new attorneys from law schools for a limited-term fellowship to instill holistic and client-centered representation practices. We will support these promising attorneys to adopt our love-focused values and scale our model. If our program succeeds, we could save over 314,000 people statewide by preventing a total of 455,267 years of unnecessary incarceration each year.
Restoring Justice believes that the best way to influence culture and policy change is with a client-centered approach, and that the best way to serve clients is through holistic representation.
HOW DO YOU KNOW THE STRATEGY IS WORKING?
As previously shown, we can measure the success of our mission for each client served through years of incarceration prevented, as determined by the plea offer at the time of initial retention of our services compared to our final resolution of the case. We can also measure success financially, which is shockingly impactful. For example, our work saved one client 12 years of incarceration. Those 12 years saved the economy $324,000 ($27,000*12 years). Every dollar donated to us will have communicable success metrics that are tangibly felt by everyone through the communities we serve, creating a societal return on investment exponentially higher than most other charitable endeavors.
We have also partnered with the University of Houston’s Honors College to begin developing a client-centered and innovative holistic defense Client Management Software Program. Once built, we will be able to report additional humanizing impact and progress metrics like number of client concerns addressed, hours spent with clients and families, systemic resources obtained, quality of life improvement, restored relationships, new relationships formed, innovative motions filed, dismissals obtained, counseling progress, desired spiritual growth, and more.
WHAT’S THE STRATEGY NOW?
Our next step is to innovate beyond policy change and focus on indigent defense culture change. Right now, there is no pipeline for passionate law school graduates who want to commit to this work. We will begin implementing a service model by recruiting underutilized new attorneys from law schools for a limited-term fellowship to instill holistic and client-centered representation practices. We will support these promising attorneys to adopt our love-focused values and scale our model.
We can provide a higher level of service by ensuring our training and supervision infrastructure is strong with values-aligned professionals. Creating a special program will also allow new culture-building opportunities to constantly feed our organization, as well as, enacting systemic change from impact projects.
Our fellows will be encouraged to continue this work and would become some of the strongest client-centered and holistic public defenders, court-appointed counsel, and social justice advocate candidates available in the country. Setting this expectation early will encourage an ongoing upbeat and positive contribution to the struggle, rather than constantly working against secondary trauma realities and burn-out.
In order to reach our goal of having an inaugural fellowship attorney class, we need to build a strong infrastructure. We will spend a year ensuring that skilled leadership exists to guide high-quality and culture-aligned representation. Our fellows will then be properly guided in client-centered representation and innovating holistic indigent defense. The fellowship program implementation has a two-year implementation plan, pending adequate funding. Click below to learn more.
HOW CAN I BE A PART AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
To lay an innovative foundation, our budget needs to grow. We are seeking the support of foundations, corporations, and generous individuals to make this growth possible. Thank you for your prayers, review, and consideration as we do our best to follow Christ’s foundational mission, as dictated by Jesus in Luke 4:18:
“The spirit of the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, sight for the blind, and to set the oppressed free.”