Bronx Defenders

In the Bronx and beyond, The Bronx Defenders promotes justice in low-income communities by keeping people united with their families. Our goal at The Bronx Defenders is two part : 1) To transform the way in which public defense is practiced to most effectively respond to the needs of indigent clients and empower individual, families, and communities impacted by involvement in the justice systems by employing the innovative and cutting-edge model of representation -- Holistic Defense -- that The Bronx Defenders has pioneered, and 2) To call attention to the widespread policing and incarceration practices that unfairly target low-income and minority populations both in the Bronx where our office is located and in other areas around the country where we train other public defenders offices in our model of holistic defense.

To achieve these goals we represent clients in the most under-served and under-resourced neighborhoods in New York City – the South Bronx, and we train public defender offices in other areas across the country with similarly vulnerable client populations. We also bring our work outside of the court room, to respond to community concerns, to mobilize community groups to know and advocate for their rights, to advocate for meaningful policy change with city and state officials, and to share our replicable model of client-centered and empowering holistic defense within the broader world of criminal justice and indigent defense across New York and the United States.

The Bronx Defenders’ unique model of interdisciplinary and holistic advocacy was created to bridge the gaps among legal, social, and community services to address the problems that drive many of our clients into the criminal justice and family court systems. The Bronx Defenders was founded as a community-based and community-responsive organization, and we continue to guide our practices and interventions based on community needs, perceptions, and feedback. Our unique service model allows us to intervene early when a client’s ability to meet her basic needs is jeopardized and to address problems before they become crises. Using a “team-based” model, our attorneys and advocates work to provide holistic and integrated representation to our clients and their families and to find comprehensive solutions to the obstacles they face.

The Bronx Defenders has been present in the South Bronx for over 17 years, and has established a strong bond with our clients and the Bronx community that we serve, as well as a positive working partnership with the City of New York as an institutional provider of indigent defense. These relationships are key in allowing us to not only address the needs of our clients and their families and communities, but to also register as an influential voice in policy discussions that have direct impact on our long-term goals.

The Bronx Defenders’ strong management and leadership structures also enhance our ability to respond to client and community needs and to achieve organizational goals. The Bronx Defenders maintains tiers of leadership teams that meet regularly to ensure that various levels of program implementation are thoroughly assessed and any needed adjustments are made in order to ensure results are tracked, outcomes are achieved, and impact is sustained. These tiers include:
• The Executive Management Team, which meets monthly. This group reflects the Managing Directors of each practice area in the office, the Executive Director, the Deputy Director, the Director of Evaluation and Technology, and the Chief Operating Officer. Each Managing Director reports back to the group at these meetings about important updates in each practice area, programmatic concerns and successes, upcoming events and fundraising/resource needs.
• Within The Bronx Defenders there are seven “practice areas”. These groups each reflect a different, but equally vital and specialized area of advocacy (criminal defense practice, family defense practice, social work, civil action practice, investigations, parent advocacy, and organizing). These practice groups meet regularly to discuss trends in their practice, share successes and failures in advocacy, provide updates on the changing legal horizons in the particular practice areas, and discuss ways to improve their practice and develop innovative solutions to problems they encounter.
• Finally, the office is internally structured to support distinct interdisciplinary teams who are guided by a Team Leader. Each team has representatives from various advocacy areas in which we work (e.g. immigration, family defense, criminal defense, civil action, social work, investigations, parent advocacy, and civil legal advocacy). These teams are the “legal homes” for our clients where they can access support, representation, and advocacy from staff with a range of disciplines, ensuring that our clients receive the services that meet their needs. Team members work collaboratively, sit in the same physical space to enhance communication and collaboration, and meet regularly to discuss clients, conduct case reviews, and discuss office wide issues.

Under the leadership of our Director of Evaluation and Technology, who works with the Managing Attorneys, Executive Director and Director of Policy & Community Organizing, The Bronx Defenders is committed to making sure that we are capturing the data we need to evaluate our work and achieve the best results in order to make meaningful strides towards achieving our organization goals. The outcome of such tracking and evaluation allows us to assess the areas that clients need more support and services and to create resources to respond to those needs. By responding directly to client needs, we are better able to serve our clients and achieve better outcomes.

The Bronx Defenders considers case outcomes and “life outcomes” when assessing the effectiveness of the Holistic Defense model and so far, the results are very positive. We have represented over 250,000 New Yorkers since our founding in 1997, helping them to access justice. In our Family Defense Practice we have served more than 6,000 families and 12,600 children since our practice’s founding, and, as the institutional provider of Family Defense in the Bronx, we have represented parents in 85% of abuse and neglect cases in the Bronx Family Court system. Among our clients with criminal cases, two-thirds of clients who are convicted of crimes are sentenced to non-incarceratory programs, and our clients serve on average 20% less jail time.

Over the past year (April 2013 to March 2014) our Civil Action Practice provided legal services to 4,871 clients on 4,830 matters, kept families housed by preventing eviction of 263 families, benefiting more than 699 household members and creating taxpayer savings of over $8,854 in shelter costs; and preserved unity of 243 families by preventing deportation of a parent or child, affecting more than 395 family members, and obtained legal immigration status for 76 other families.

Most recently, in 2014, The Bronx Defenders has also created the first ever client-centered holistic case management, which integrates all client data across practice areas into one comprehensive and holistic database. Recognizing the complex and interconnected nature of our holistic legal services, we identified a need for our information technology systems to be restructured to reflect our evolving and adapting practice. In this new system, a client has one profile, which allows staff from different programs and disciplines to view all updates in real time and to better collaborate to deliver the most comprehensive client services. The benefit of this new a fully integrated holistic legal case management system is improved progressive data sharing between program areas, which allow us to expand and enhance the services we provide our clients. This provides The Bronx Defenders with a renewed capacity to expand holistic services with greater access to evaluate and report on the quality of the client services.