DELAWARE COUNTY PROPOSAL – CLIENT ADVOCATE SERVICES

Executive Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed many of America’s most pressing problems: the
racialized lack of access to resources and support, hyper-criminalization of Black and Brown
communities, and lethal cycles of disruption, trauma, and stifled opportunity generated by the
criminal legal system. Over the last 2 years, jails have become infection hotbeds, legal
processes have slowed, and the system’s harms that extend beyond incarceration—
homelessness, joblessness, educational disruption and family disintegration—have become
impossible to ignore.

Nine million people cycle through U.S. jails each year, 2 million are confined to the
physical cages of a prison, and another 4.5 million live within the invisible confinement of parole
or probation. Black and Brown people, their families, and communities are disproportionately
impacted by this colossal system. The enmeshed penalties—the non-judicial penalties arising
from arrests, charges, time spent in jail, and convictions—can be catastrophic. One’s housing,
employment, parental rights, and educational options, as well as one’s ability to borrow student
loans, obtain a professional license, vote, or access public benefits/supports, can all be
adversely affected by an arrest, not just a conviction.

While current justice reform efforts focus, understandably, on police and prisons, not
enough attention is paid to the value that public defense could provide to address the underlying
causes of crime and increase public safety. Public defenders are the resource most proximate
and available to people most harmed by the criminal legal system. Nearly 80% of people facing
criminal charges depend on public defenders to navigate the legal process and prevent the
worst outcomes of criminal legal system contact.

Public defenders are assigned (almost automatically) to people who are at the highest
risk in the community. They also carry both a unique position of legally-protected confidentiality
and an exclusive ethical obligation to act on their clients’ expressed interests.Further, they are
not an opt-in resource—their use does not depend on a person finding out about them or
choosing to seek them out. This trust, access, and zeal give public defenders the power to
create restorative, tailored solutions to keep people out of jail, prevent the enmeshed penalties
of arrest, and provide access to supportive community resources to address the underlying
issues that gave rise to legal system involvement.

Partners for Justice (PFJ) was founded to transform public defense locally and across
the U.S in order to ensure that race and wealth no longer determine legal outcomes. This
means ensuring public defenders have the knowledge, tools, and capacity to fulfill the most
ambitious definition of their ethical and constitutional duty. Particularly, it means equipping public

Partners for Justice Proposal - Page 1 of 11

defenders to assist their clients with the underlying circumstances driving their involvement in
the legal system, secure better legal outcomes both inside and outside the courtroom, and
ensure that more clients can walk away from the criminal legal system with their rights, life, and
future protected.

PFJ increases defender capacity through several complementary programs, involving

both training and direct capacity-building. Primarily, PFJ embeds trained non-attorney Client
Advocates in the public defender’s office, emphasizing Advocates who share identities and lived
experiences with the client communities they are serving. In the most recent placements, 86%
of embedded Advocates identified as BIPOC and 40% are personally impacted by the criminal
legal system. There, they transform any criminal defense space into a service hub for
low-income community members. Depending on the office, some examples of what they can
assist with include: bail advocacy, eviction prevention, preventing termination of employment
due to arrest, obtaining identification, connecting clients with mental health or substance use
treatment programs, assisting clients to comply with court requirements, applying for benefits or
access to counsel for benefits appeals, driver’s license reinstatement, connecting with
employment or education resources, and obtaining pro bono counsel for civil, family, and
immigration law matters.

PFJ’s partnership with defenders increases access to services (with thousands of people
having been served by PFJ’s Advocates since just 2018), changes attorney practice (nearly
three-quarters of partner attorneys indicating a shift toward holistic thinking since PFJ's arrival)
and decreases the use of jail (with over 130 years in jail eliminated since the organization’s
inception via a unique method of engaging support services to create stronger mitigation for
judges and prosecutors to consider).

In Delaware County, PFJ proposes leveraging those strengths to serve the needs of the
moment: meeting the American Rescue Plan’s goals of increasing access to the social safety
net, meeting the county’s interest in diminishing jail usage, and creating a flagship model of
collaborative defense which could be replicated throughout the state.

The Problem

Partners for Justice (PFJ) was founded to transform public defense locally and across
the U.S in order to ensure that race and wealth no longer determine legal outcomes. This
means ensuring public defenders have the knowledge, tools, and capacity to fulfill the most
ambitious definition of their ethical and constitutional duty. Particularly, it means equipping public
defenders to assist their clients with the underlying circumstances driving their involvement in
the legal system, secure better legal outcomes both inside and outside the courtroom, and
ensure that more clients can walk away from the criminal legal system with their rights, life, and
future protected.

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 Nine million people cycle through U.S. jails each year, 2 million are confined to the
physical cages of a prison, and another 4.5 million live within the invisible confinement of parole
or probation. Black and Brown people, their families, and communities are disproportionately
impacted by this colossal system. The enmeshed penalties—the non-judicial penalties that arise
from arrests, charges, time spent in jail, and convictions—can be catastrophic. One’s housing,
employment, parental rights, and educational options, as well as one’s ability to borrow student
loans, obtain a professional license, vote, or access public benefits/supports, can be adversely
affected by an arrest, not just a conviction.

Poverty is both a predictor of involvement with the legal system as well as a

consequence. Low-income people are 3x more likely to be arrested and 20x more likely to be
incarcerated.1 Most recent data from the U.S. Department of Justice indicated that as many as
90% of people charged with crimes were indigent.2 Nearly 2 in 3 families (65%) with an
incarcerated member were unable to meet their family’s basic needs.3 The effects of legal
system involvement are lasting: children and families bear the ongoing economic consequences
of separation from their loved one who is being harmed by the criminal legal system. An
estimated 50-75% of incarcerated individuals report having a minor child, and up to 10 million
American children have had a parent arrested.4,5 When these harms are multiplied across
low-income, non-white communities who are over-represented in our criminal legal system, it
becomes apparent that the safety, civil rights, and economic mobility of entire neighborhoods
and regions are impacted.

While current justice reform efforts focus, understandably, on police and prisons, not
enough attention is paid to the value that public defense could provide. Nearly 80% of people
facing criminal charges depend on public defenders to navigate the legal process and prevent
the worst outcomes of criminal legal system contact. Transforming public defense as the
resource most proximate and available to people facing charges is an efficient way to shift
power to those most harmed by the criminal legal system. Public defenders are assigned
(almost automatically) to people who are at the highest risk in the community and defenders
hold a unique position of legally-protected confidentiality and trust. Further, they are not an
opt-in resource—their use does not depend on a person finding out about them or choosing to
seek help. This trust and access give public defenders the power to create restorative, tailored
solutions to keep people out of jail, prevent the enmeshed penalties of arrest, and provide
access to supportive community resources.

1
O'Neill Hayes, Tara, and Margaret Barnhorst. Incarceration and poverty in the United States. American Action
Forum. July 2020.
2
Department of Justice. Crime in the United States: Estimated number of arrests 2019.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-29.
3
deVuono-powell, Saneta et al. Who pays? The true cost of incarceration on families. Ella Baker Center, Forward
Together, Research Action Design, 2015.
4
Roxburgh, Susan & Fitch, Chivon. (2014). Parental status, child contact, and well-being among incarcerated men
and women. Journal of Family Issues, 35(10): pp. 1394-1412.
5
Eric Martin. "Hidden consequences: The impact of incarceration on dependent children," March 1, 2017,
nij.ojp.gov:https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/hidden-consequences-impact-incarceration-dependent-children.

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 Investing in public defense has tremendous potential to meaningfully shrink the footprint
of the criminal legal system by reducing jail days and minimizing the time people are entangled
with police and the courts. Our work is informed by a model of public defense that incorporates
poverty-reducing strategies, termed “holistic defense” and pioneered by the Bronx Defenders. It
involves bringing criminal defense attorneys, civil attorneys, family attorneys, and immigration
attorneys together under one roof, working alongside non-legal professionals such as social
workers, investigators, community organizers, and client advocates. These interdisciplinary
teams work together to mitigate the impact of the client’s criminal case, connect the client to
community-based resources that help stabilize their life, and prevent enmeshed penalties that
could destroy their future.

Research shows us that holistic public defenders get better outcomes for their clients’
legal cases. A recent study by RAND and the University of Pennsylvania Law School shows that
holistic defense in the Bronx reduced incarceration rates, cut pre-trial detention, and shortened
sentence lengths.6 These outcomes were achieved with no impact on public safety and offered
an estimated $165 million in taxpayer savings. This finding was reinforced by further studies in
California and Louisiana. The evaluation of a holistic defense pilot in Santa Barbara, California
found that “holistic defense clients saw a higher percentage of their arraignment charges
dismissed and they plead guilty to a lower percentage of them..”7 The study of a holistic defense
model for young people in Louisiana indicated that clients were also more likely to avoid
conviction and to obtain favorable case outcomes.”8

Partners for Justice

Holistic defense is effective, but it has not spread widely. Public defenders seeking to
implement holistic defense face barriers that include the need to adapt internal processes in
multiple areas, the cultural change required to shift attorney practice, and the financial
investment required to dramatically expand in-house staffing. The inaccessibility of holistic
practice not only contributes to poorer legal outcomes, but makes it impossible for public
defenders to help individuals to achieve stability after a legal case is resolved. The non-legal
challenges clients face—poverty, unemployment, mental health issues—are interwoven in their
legal encounters. These are causes, complications, and results of interactions with the criminal
legal system all at the same time.

PFJ is committed to using innovative and scalable strategies to help traditional public
defenders overcome these barriers and transform into holistic, client-centered offices. While
public defenders all share the same core mandate of indigent defense, they differ widely in how

6
Anderson, James M. et al. “Holistic representation: An innovative approach to defending poor clients can reduce
incarceration and save taxpayer dollars—without harm to public safety.” RAND Corporation, 2019.
7
Harris, Heather M. “Building holistic defense: The design and evaluation of a social work centric model of public
defense.” Criminal Justice Policy Review, vol. 31, no. 6, July 2020.
8
Phillippi, Stephen et al. “Holistic representation in juvenile defense: An evaluation of a multidisciplinary children's
defense team.” Behavioral Sciences & The Law, vol. 39, Feb 2021.

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they fulfill that duty. To name a few of the factors at play, public defender offices can differ in the
needs of the people they are serving, their structure and governance, their funding source, the
scope of representation available, and when they begin representation. These differences drive
how holistic defense can be most effectively implemented in that specific office and what it will
take to drive changes in practice.

PFJ partners with existing public defenders to adapt holistic defense to their unique
situation and infuse their systems and practices with a client-centered approach. For example,
PFJ has helped one public defender in East Baton Rouge implement early mitigation at
arraignment given the significant number of people incarcerated pre-trial in that jurisdiction.
Another example is designing holistic service menus grounded in jurisdictional views on the
unauthorized practice of law in Alameda County, CA and New Castle, DE. Offices often need
help:
● Designing systems to facilitate holistic issue-spotting and mitigation at different
points of practice (e.g., arraignments vs. pre-trial vs. re-entry)
● Training attorneys and other staff on how to work in interdisciplinary teams
● Building local partnerships to meet clients’ civil and social service needs
● Helping offices design the systems and processes needed to support holistic
defense in their office
● Collecting data to make the case for holistic defense and further improve office
practice are other examples.

Finally, in some jurisdictions, such as Los Angeles County, PFJ engages in advocacy efforts
with local stakeholders and government to mobilize resources for holistic defense.Public
defenders are more successful at implementing holistic defense when it addresses their office’s
priorities, culture, and constraints.

PFJ’s flagship program embeds trained non-attorney Client Advocates in the public
defender’s office, emphasizing Advocates who share identities and lived experiences with the
client communities they are serving. In PFJ’s most recent placements, 86% of embedded
Advocates identified as BIPOC and 40% are personally impacted by the criminal legal system.
Embedded Client Advocates join their host public defender with a predefined service menu that
allows the office to instantly expand their capacity for holistic intervention. Their efforts also
allow offices to quickly demonstrate the value of holistic practice to internal and external
stakeholders.

While embedded, Client Advocates receive referrals from attorneys and carry a caseload
of clients that they assist directly. Depending on the office, some examples of what they can
assist with include: bail advocacy, eviction prevention, preventing termination of employment
due to arrest, obtaining identification, connecting clients with mental health or substance use
treatment programs, assisting clients to comply with court requirements, applying for benefits or
access to counsel for benefits appeals, driver’s license reinstatement, connecting with

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employment or education resources, and obtaining pro bono counsel for civil, family, and
immigration law matters.

PFJ currently partners with offices in Alameda, Los Angeles, and Yolo Counties in
California; Harris County in Texas; East Baton Rouge and New Orleans Parishes in Louisiana;
the Confederated Tribes of the Salish and Kootenai of the Flathead Reservation in Montana;
and Miami Dade County in Florida. As PFJ scales, we are redefining public defense so as to
create lasting, systemic transformation that drives public safety, equity, and opportunity.

PFJ and its partners have seen the power of holistic transformation play out in our work
over the last three years, whether it be in improving legal outcomes, increasing access to social
services, or changing attorney practice. For example, only 36% of felony cases in America’s
largest counties resolve with a lesser charge, diversion, or deferral. However, when an
embedded PFJ Client Advocate provided the public defender with mitigation on a case, we
found 79% of our felony cases were dropped, diverted, or deferred. In just its first few service
cycles, PFJ teams saved clients an estimated 46,827 days in jail. We know that any amount of
time behind bars can severely disrupt a person’s life, and we are committed to minimizing that
harm through adequate and life-affirming public defense.

Further, in the last three years, PFJ’s embedded teams have connected 2,300+ clients
with community-based social services, often related to jobs, housing, education, mental health
services, and accessing social safety net benefits. One of the first partners, Delaware’s former
Chief Defender Brendan O’Neill, shared that PFJ is “a tremendous asset...they’ve managed to
stave off evictions, find stable living arrangements for young people, fight to get kids back into
school, help our clients get back to work, obtain desperately-needed public benefits, and even
reunite families.” We know that these services—not arrests and jail time—are the factors that
truly prevent crime and promote safety and well-being.

PFJ’s model prioritizes human dignity, grace, and connection, especially for those who
have historically faced ostracization or neglect in the traditional legal system as well as
changing the way public defense clients relate to the system and the way legal actors relate to
their clients. Clients feel empowered as their experiences are validated, their needs are met,
and they gain knowledge about the legal system that might otherwise be hidden from them.
Additionally, lawyers and other legal actors are able to recognize a fuller picture of their clients’
lives, personalities, and futures. This humanizes the people they serve and leads to more
quality service and better legal outcomes. The agency has found that 73% of attorneys are
more likely to talk to clients about non-criminal matters since PFJ partnered with their office.
This model inserts dignity and human connection into an otherwise distressing process.

PFJ’s work is by definition centered in partnership and collaboration and does not seek
to replace, replicate, or re-invent. It is our purpose to do whatever it takes to help public
defender partners provide the best possible holistic representation to their clients. Though each
partnership is discrete, PFJ actively seeks to create a community of practice that allows the best

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ideas and insights to spread across the country, instead of remaining limited to the localities we
partner with. The agency is creating connections between defender leaders around the country,
hosting bimonthly roundtables, coordinating around specific shared interests, and sharing best
practices and model policies across our partner sites. PFJ also encourages its embedded Client
Advocate teams to collaborate cross-jurisdictionally, setting workplace norms of frequent
collaboration and idea-sharing on Slack, recording successes and successful ideas, and
coaching Advocates to demonstrate the power of their best community-centered work to their
outside partners and in-office leadership alike.

On the ground, embedded Advocates and public defender partners maintain entire
databases in each site to track the hundreds of institutions that we work with. Examples of major
partners that reflect this vast network are the Delaware Civil Legal Aid Society, which assists
with many of our client’s non-criminal needs, and The Bail Project-Houston, which helps get
clients out of jail when they cannot afford their freedom. PFJ works closely with national
agencies such as Gideon’s Promise, National Legal Aid & Defender Association, Reform
Alliance, Silicon Valley Debug, and Zealous to advocate for criminal legal system reform,
transforming public defense, and increased resourcing for public defenders. PFJ also partners
with diverse organizations and practitioners from all over the country to train Advocates. These
range from civil rights attorneys to healing justice practitioners and immigration experts.

Public defenders are one of the country’s best resources to address poverty, public
safety, and meeting the basic needs of marginalized communities. More must be done to ensure
that this upstream resource is capable of meeting people’s needs and shielding them from the
myriad disastrous life consequences that stem from arrest. This work is urgently needed and our
dynamic and collaborative approach has the potential to significantly address the roots of
involvement in the legal system, increase the chances that a person at risk of incarceration will
be given an alternative path, and contribute overall to public safety. Thank you for the
opportunity to share this work with you as well as PFJ’s vision to build a world where the legal
system reflects the humanity, complexity, and potential of all.

Proposal For Delaware County

Delaware County finds itself in a unique moment: transitioning from a privately-run jail to
public oversight of the full correctional system, and instituting a more robust defense agency
with the potential to become a statewide model for top-of-the-line access to justice. These twin
endeavors create the potential for both efforts to become positively reinforcing: strengthening
restorative services inside defense can reduce the need to utilize the jail, taking the strain off the
correctional system while fostering opportunity, safety, and economic mobility in the community.

PFJ proposes recruiting a team of 5 Client Advocates to be embedded with the

Delaware County Office of the Public Defender, operating as a holistic-services unit in
collaboration with the attorneys, social workers, and support staff already in place. Because of

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PFJ’s national recruiting capacity and robust support for a diverse set of candidates, PFJ is able
to attract talent from a wide variety of backgrounds and identities, increasing representation in
the law and quasi-legal roles. While recent estimates indicate that the law is over 80% White as
a profession, 86% of PFJ’s 2021 Advocate class identified as BIPOC, and 40% disclosed some
form of system impact in their own families. While building incredible classes of PFJ Advocates
and embedding them with public defenders, PFJ is cognizant of their potential to become the
next generation of public service leaders, and also keenly aware of the role the organization has
in supporting their talent in order to increase representation in the legal field. PFJ’s success in
attracting and retaining diverse talent is rooted not only in its mission and values, but also in its
programmatic support for Advocates, which includes affinity groups and healing spaces within
the program to reflect on—and recover from—the difficult work of transforming an unjust
system, as well as direct financial support to ensure low-income candidates are able to thrive:
relocation payments, funding for post-program graduate education (including applications and
exam prep), personalized career coaching, and emergency funds for young professionals from
low-income backgrounds who cannot rely on the “bank of mom and dad.”

Activities and Outcomes

Specifically, PFJ’s work with the Delaware County Office of the Public Defender will
constitute an initial two-year pilot, consisting of the following stages:

● Recruitment: PFJ will recruit a diverse, high-achieving group of 5 early career

professionals to serve as Client Advocates, embedded inside the Public Defender and
working in collaboration with their staff.
● Training: PFJ will provide an intensive introductory training to Client Advocates on
holistic public defense principles, issue-spotting for possible enmeshed penalties or
collateral consequences, skills for working with public defender clients, and social
service navigation. PFJ will also deliver introductory training on holistic defense and
social service issues to attorneys at the public defender’s request. Finally, PFJ will
deliver monthly continuing education sessions throughout the Advocates’ term of service
on topics relevant to their work, such as addressing common enmeshed penalties,
persuasive mitigation writing, oral advocacy, and more.
● Service Delivery: PFJ Client Advocates will serve at least 480 to 800 clients (depending
on the number of Advocates) during this contract period, and provide them with
wraparound support services and case navigation. Based on objectives defined at the
outset of each client case, we expect Advocates will successfully meet 70% of client
case objectives for clients that agree to receive Advocate services. These objectives
mainly will be in the areas of Housing; Employment; Benefits; Health; Family, Children &
Youth; Criminal Case; along with other less common areas of service. Objectives will be
identified in attorney referrals. Examples include connecting clients with housing support
agencies and/or eviction defense legal services to secure and maintain stable housing,
supporting clients with job search and training resources to secure and maintain
employment, and assistance with applications for government financial and medical

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 benefits. On average, Advocates will be assisting clients with multiple service areas,
generally around three per client.
● Capacity Building: PFJ will provide ongoing advisory assistance to the public defender
on the implementation of Client Advocate roles and services in their offices through the
form of onboarding support, monthly meetings, and inclusion in PFJ’s national Advocate
supervisor community and resources.
● Data Gathering: PFJ will provide quarterly reports to the public defender detailing
progress toward the milestones and metrics outlined in this scope of work, and track
service delivery with regular dashboards (sample dashboard attached). Successful
delivery of the number of client cases noted above is dependent on referrals from public
defenders, and PFJ will repeat trainings as needed and offer technical assistance to
ensure attorney engagement. Finally, PFJ will provide expertise and instruments to the
PD enabling them to gather better information about clients’ needs and experiences with
their office, and to track changes in attorney practice based on the implementation of
holistic work.

Impact

On the whole, PFJ Advocates create significant jail-day reductions for the people they
serve. Based on a sample study, PFJ found that a Client Advocate creating mitigation petitions
documenting the work they have done with clients in just 15% of their annual cases will
eliminate nearly 4 years in jail. A team of five could eliminate around 7,260 days in jail for
Delaware County residents. This would reduce the strain on the local jail, but also reduce so
many of the negative consequences described above, improving economic mobility, stability,
and long-term success for those who received restorative services rather than incarceration.
The effect of this is also felt beyond the individual served: it impacts their children, partner, other
loved ones, colleagues, and community. Of course, this is a projection of a sample study, and
much depends on other system stakeholders to realize these figures, but with judges and
prosecution aligned on the value of restorative solutions, the reductions in jail usage could also
be higher.

The availability of these services for community members also influences the
surrounding system and region. Community members who are getting more from their defender,
and who can rely on the local defender as a source of wraparound support, are more likely to
engage favorably with vital services and may have a more positive experience of the justice
system more broadly. Prosecutors and judges working with defenders who are empowered to
do more for their clients can rely on stronger alternatives to incarceration and the ability to
create better-informed, better-tailored offers and solutions for those entangled with the criminal
legal system. And, as data is gathered on the impact of this work in Delaware County, this office
will serve as a demonstration of what public defenders can do when resourced to go beyond
legal defense and meet the true needs of their clientele.

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 This program is well-suited to the current influx of American Rescue Plan funding, which
has been “designed, in part, to ‘lay the foundation for a strong, equitable economic
recovery….by addressing systemic public health and economic challenges that may have
contributed to more severe impacts of the pandemic among low-income communities and
people of color.’ Specifically, the funds may be used for...programs that “assist community
members with navigating and applying for available Federal, State, and local public benefits or
services”. PFJ combines both aims: focusing on people of color most likely to have been
negatively impacted during the pandemic because of the joint stressors of poverty and legal
system involvement, and creating an efficient, replicable system to connect them with supportive
services. This is a direct fulfillment of the goals of the ARPA funding, with the added benefit of
reducing jail usage and incarceration in a moment of transition within Delaware County.

With sufficient resources, Delaware County can lead the state in transforming access to
justice and breaking the cycle of poverty and incarceration, a cycle that imperiled Black and
Brown lives before the pandemic and has proved both lethal and intractable in the time since.
An investment in public defense is an investment in the community, in their success, and in their
empowerment.

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 PROPOSED BUDGET

PARTNERS FOR JUSTICE – CLIENT ADVOCATE SERVICES

Two-Year Budget for Five (5) Client Advocates

Category Year 1 Year 2 Combined

Advocate Salary & Benefits $316,008 $316,007 $632,015

Advocate Training & Programs $25,482 $16,988 $42,470

PFJ Site Support (recruiting,

$54,774 $52,800 $107,574
capacity building, coaching)

PFJ Administrative Costs $39,103 $39,103 $78,206

Total $435,366 $424,898 $860,264

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