Access to Counsel
Challenging the Status Quo: Mobilizing Youth Defense Teams to Uphold Youth Rights & Uproot Injustice
This Racial Justice Webinar was hosted by the Gault Center and Georgetown Law’s Juvenile Justice Clinic & Initiative on May 29, 2024. The webinar focused on a collective call to action for the youth defense community to transform the juvenile legal system by centering youth and their constitutional rights to freedom, liberty, and equality. This…
On May 5, 2021, NJDC presented at an Illinois Summit about our report, Due Process in the Time of COVID. The presentation may be useful to other jurisdictions as they consider continuing to use technology to hold court hearings virtually as the pandemic wanes.
NJDC is proud to partner with the Players Coalition to eliminate barriers to that prevent young people from accessing their constitutional right to counsel.
New England Patriot Devin McCourty and Players Coalition team up with the National Juvenile Defender Center to raise awareness that far too many young people in juvenile court don’t ever get lawyers.
“What we know is that when access to justice depends on a child’s ability to pay for their own defense, the disparities of class, race, and ethnicity are magnified.”
On January 30th, 2019, the Players Coalition Charitable Foundation unveiled its 2019 plan to impact racial and social inequality and also announced its 2018-19 support of six national non-profit organizations at a press conference. Players Coalition Co-Founders Anquan Boldin and Malcolm Jenkins presented the Coalition’s direction for the next year. At the press conference, NJDC…
Executive Director, Mary Ann Scali at John Jay College on Young People, Justice, and Defending Children
This checklist can be used to assess the presence of constitutional violations throughout the course of a client’s case. Please refer to the National Youth Defense Systems Standards and their accompanying User Guide for litigation strategies to challenge potential constitutional violations noted in this checklist.
This User Guide provides advocates with a step-by-step outline of how to actualize the vision of the National Youth Defense System Standards to equip and invest in youth defense teams to fight for the liberation of all youth. The User Guide outlines constitutional rights detailed in the System Standards, provides a checklist to assess the…
Appeal from the Circuit Court of Pemiscot County, Division I Thirty-Fourth Judicial Circuit, Pemiscot County No. 18PE-JU00022 The Honorable W. Keith Currie, Judge
The Utah assessment is the 29th statewide assessment of youth defense delivery systems the Gault Center has conducted. These assessments gather information and data about the structure and funding of defense systems and examine whether youth receive counsel at all critical stages, the timing of appointments, waiver of counsel, youth defense resource allocation, supervision and…
In 2020, after the District of Columbia Court of Appeals released its decision in In re N.H.M., expanding DC youths’ access to post-disposition counsel, Open City Advocates, which represented N.H.M., contacted the Gault Center to explore how to support the expansion of post-disposition representation in other jurisdictions. We reviewed analyses of post-disposition representation of youth,…
The Wren Collective (2023). This independent report by the Wren Collective examines youth defense appointment practices in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and finds that juvenile court judges are routinely assigning private attorneys over public defenders to represent youth in juvenile court. Specifically, the public defender’s office was appointed to 25% of the juvenile delinquency cases in…
Outlines steps that states must take to comply with the minimum requirements of the U.S. Constitution to protect the rights of youth facing deprivations of liberty.