Who We Are
Support Public Defense in New Orleans
Public defense in New Orleans is at a critical crossroads. While the recent announcement of a $150,000 increase to our 2016 appropriation was a welcome renewed commitment to OPD, we still remain drastically under-funded and outresourced compared to other criminal justice entities and face a continued budget shortfall. This threatens our community's right to an open and honest, efficient and effective criminal justice system.
The Orleans Public Defenders play a critical role in protecting the rights and well-being of our community, reducing recidivism by connecting people to jobs and services, and ensuring our criminal justice system remains fair and just, especially for New Orleans' poorest and most vulnerable citizens.
We make our final case for equal justice before the New Orleans City Council Thursday morning. We are asking for your support. Attend our budget hearing. Call your council representative and Mayor Landrieu to demand full funding for OPD and parity within our criminal justice system. If you haven't yet, please sign our petition.
OPD Spearheads Pilot Program Bringing Municipal Court to the New Orleans Mission
New Orleans – On Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 10 a.m., the Orleans Public Defenders, in collaboration with Orleans Parish Municipal Court, the City Attorney’s office and the New Orleans Mission, will launch the Municipal Court at the Mission pilot program. Judge Sean Early will hold court at the New Orleans Mission in the hopes of clearing the nearly 34,000 open attachments in Municipal Court, as well as address the issue of incarcerating the homeless head on.
Of the tens of thousands of attachments outstanding, the vast majority are issued to homeless, mentally-ill or those battling substance abuse issues whose living environments are usually unstable. Once someone misses a court date, a warrant is issued and upon arrest, most spend weeks in jail simply because they can’t pay the associated fine.
OPD Launches Crowdfunding Campaign to Meet Funding Gap
Faced with a nearly $1 million budget shortfall, the Orleans Public Defenders once again is in crisis and Constitutionally-required legal representation in New Orleans is again in jeopardy due to decreased revenue and budget shortfalls. To this end, OPD launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise $50,000 in five days. The campaign kicked off Monday, September 14 and will go through Friday, September 18.
Donate here: www.opdla.causevox.com.
The Struggle is Now is our cry for help. Help our defenders. Help our clients.Help our community. Help us continue our critical work to ensure a fair and just New Orleans.
Every little bit helps. Donate. Spread the word. Together we can continue our mission. Together we can ensure no one faces the criminal justice system alone.
I’m a public defender. It’s impossible for me to do a good job representing my clients.
OPD Staff Attorney Tina Peng talks about the realities and struggles of a continued budget crisis.
The Orleans Public Defenders are facing a million-dollar deficit as a result of statewide budget cuts. For a small office like ours, that’s devastating. To avoid layoffs, the entire staff will see the equivalent of four unpaid weeks per year in furloughs, increased caseloads and a hiring freeze — and the submission to the Louisiana Public Defender Board of a plan to cut services to the people of New Orleans. We are already stretched thin: Our office represents 85 percent of the people charged with crimes in Orleans Parish but has an annual budget about a third the size of the district attorney’s. The American Bar Association recommends that public defenders not work on more than 150 felony cases a year. In 2014, I handled double that.
Derwyn Bunton: Public Defense Reform Shows Both the Challenge and the Possibility of Post-Katrina New Orleans
In the second season of the HBO series True Detective, Frank Semyon (played by Vince Vaughn), tells a young boy who recently lost his father, "Sometimes a thing happens, splits your life. There's a before and after." For us New Orleanians, that "thing [that] happens" was Hurricane Katrina.
Before Katrina, justice was elusive and unwelcome -- flushed out of the New Orleans criminal justice system long before Hurricane Katrina flooded the courthouse and the jail in 2005. Orleans Parish Prison was packed with more than 6,000 people the day Katrina landed and most had little to no representation in the absence of an organized and institutionally competent public defender office.
Why Public Defense Funding Matters on the Local Level
OPD is facing a $1 million shortfall. The current budget crisis is brought about in part from underfunding and budget cuts by the state and in part from underfunding by the city in the form disparity with other criminal justice agents and the reliance on fines and fees.
But the budget crisis is brought about entirely as a result of an unstable, unreliable and inadequate user-pay regime of funding that makes it impossible to predict from year to year when the next extreme budget shortfall will occur. In the absence of sustainable funding by both the city and the state, we will continue to have a budget crisis every few years when funding by either entity inevitably falls short; the result of which are ultimately unhealthy for New Orleans' criminal justice system.
