Securing the Right to Counsel through the Creation of a National Training Program with Online Technical Support for Indigent Defense Providers

This program is funded under the Edward Byrne Memorial Competitive Grant Program (Byrne Competitive Program), which helps communities improve the functioning and capacity of state and local criminal justice systems. The Answering Gideon's Call: National Assistance to Improve the Effectiveness of Right to Counsel Services Initiative is in response to the U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision Gideon v. Wainwright of 1963, which guaranteed the right to counsel in criminal cases in every state. In the criminal justice system, indigent defense providers are often underfunded and understaffed, severely affecting the delivery of effective, efficient, and quality legal representation for indigent criminal defendants. The Answering Gideon's Call: NACDL will use the supplemental grant funds to provide attorneys with updated training on forensic sciences, as well as the reliability of law enforcement practices and procedures relevant to raising such claims.
CA/NCF

The Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation (BCJI) Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) provider delivers a wide range of TTA services to communities participating in the Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation (BCJI) Program. These services include, but are not limited to, helping neighborhoods to: build cross-sector partnerships; implement effective data-driven or innovative place-based revitalization strategies; engage local residents as equal and important stakeholders; build and increase trust between communities and the police; and collaborate with research partners to collect, analyze, and aid sites in ongoing use of data to enhance program management and to sustain their strategies. BCJI sites leverage this TTA to plan and implement data-driven, cross-sector strategies to reduce crime and violence. BCJI TTA activities are coordinated with other federal interagency work and TTA activities.

BCJI is a central component of the Administration’s larger place-based programming efforts which includes the Promise Zones and Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative (NRI). These initiatives help local and tribal communities develop place-based, community-oriented strategies to change neighborhoods of distress into neighborhoods of opportunity. Through coordinated federal support, there are growing interagency efforts to align a comprehensive range of federal programs across several agencies, including Departments of Education (ED), DOJ, Health and Human Services (HHS), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Agriculture (USDA), Interior, and Treasury to both build capacity and revitalize these communities

The goal of the BCJI TTA Program is to support the needs of the local BCJI sites (and others as requested by BJA) to ensure that local results are achieved through ongoing development and management of the BCJI program. The objectives of the BCJI TTA Program are to proactively manage, facilitate, and support:

• Community-oriented strategies that involve the engagement of community residents and partners to work collaboratively with criminal justice and other neighborhood revitalization initiatives.
• Collaborative partnerships and trust building between community members and law enforcement
• Place-based strategies to effectively identify, assess, and target crime hot spots or crime problems.
• Cross-sector and community partnerships, particularly with partners that support community revitalization and social service providers.
• Local research-practitioner partnerships to lead data-driven strategic and innovative approaches.
• Ongoing growth and refinement of the BCJI program model.

BCJI TTA can include training, technical assistance, and guidance that addresses the management, organization, and project implementation needs of the BCJI grantees. It can also include mentoring by other experts in program implementation and management. At a minimum, the TTA provider shall ensure that its efforts are framed around supporting the development of each site’s strategy for building a comprehensive plan to reduce crime and revitalize the community, and the grantee’s capacity to achieve results

This supplement seeks to continue and build on NACDL’s work under the Answering Gideon’s Call grant to address two problems within the criminal justice system: (1) lack of quality training for public defense practitioners, and (2) lack of public support for public defense.
CA/NCF