• Contact Us
• Home

JRS grew out of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The founders of JRS wanted to apply the lessons learned from rescuing children from the chaos of the collapsed post-Katrina Louisiana legal system. While adults languished in jail, many of the founders of JRS moved quickly to ensure the 150 children evacuated from detention centers in New Orleans had access to legal representation, access to the courts and access to their scattered families. Consequently, the children evacuated from detention in New Orleans saw their cases continue to move. All but one child were ostensibly represented by part-time employees hired by the Orleans Indigent Defense Program, the same program exposed by the New York Times in 1997 for doing little or nothing to represent clients, merely asking a client to pray prior to receiving a disposition to one of Louisiana’s harsh juvenile prisons. These state-appointed lawyers were the same public defenders discussed in two reports by the American Bar Association’s Juvenile Justice Center in 2000 and 2001 and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association in 2006 as part of a local and state system that left children systemically undefended, undermining our system of justice.

In his 1997 New York Times article chronicling the shortfalls of OPJC, journalist Fox Butterfield introduced the United States and the world to the Orleans juvenile public defender system. To illustrate the absurdity of public defender practice in OPJC at the time, Butterfield observed the public defender meeting his client for the first time just minutes before the youth’s trial began in the crowded courthouse waiting room. He was without an office of his own. The public defender did not “have a file cabinet, a telephone to contact defendants, or a clerk or secretary to help him draft motions or conduct investigations.” Butterfield went on to point out the public defender remained “largely silent” during the court proceedings. The “defense table was conspicuously bare: no case files, law books, or even the police report on the defendant, to use to challenge the prosecutor.”

Riding a wave of reform and outrage, the founders at JRS organized and formed a new public interest law office determined to change how young people and families are defended in Louisiana courts. In the fall of 2006, JRS incorporated and began working to change juvenile defense in Louisiana, beginning in Orleans Parish by contracting with the Orleans Public Defenders Office to represent youth and families in Orleans Parish. JRS now provides high quality, holistic and effective legal representation to court-involved youth and families in New Orleans. However, our chief mission is threefold:

1. to reduce Louisiana’s reliance upon incarceration as a way of treating delinquency;
2. JRS seeks to empower Louisiana youth and their families by assisting in the development and expansion of rehabilitation and alternative programs; and
3. through education, advocacy and litigation, JRS defends the rights of Louisiana’s youth and families harmed by government action or denied educational opportunity.

Katrina and Rita revealed many ugly things about our state, but perhaps most ugly, the storms revealed how our justice system abandoned — literally — our children. The responsibility to defend the liberty of young people is not a private volunteer matter. It is the state of Louisiana’s lawful obligation. As we struggle to rebuild New Orleans and our state, let us take the opportunity to make sure Louisiana’s juvenile justice system is rebuilt with a defender system that defends our youth and helps build our families and community. We at JRS look forward to working with everyone who cares about our young people, our state and New Orleans to make this vision a reality.