NACDL - Participatory Defense: Involving Family & Community in Your Client’s Case [webinar]

Participatory Defense: Involving Family & Community in Your Client’s Case [webinar]

Silicon Valley De-Bug’s Albert Cobarrubias Justice Project has developed an approach for clients, their families, and their communities to partner with public defender offices to change the outcome of cases and policies that govern the local criminal justice system. Raj Jayadev shares the model called “participatory defense” and ways defender offices could employ the approach locally with their communities.

;

The session covers how to animate and partner with community stakeholders and create sustainable infrastructure to assist defender office efforts in cases, policy issues, and general public support. We also discuss media and public education campaigns to elevate the understanding and valuing of the role of defender offices in transforming the criminal justice system.

As an example of the immediate and concrete impact that the participatory defense model can have for public defenders, Raj shows how public defenders can use those networks to help create "social biography videos" to humanize clients for purposes of impacting sentencing, plea-negotiations, and more. The webinar discusses specific case examples, the production process, and how the videos were used to secure sought after case resolutions. Technology has become cheaper, more accessible, and has created new avenues for client's stories to be shared in the court system. The webinar shares how defender offices can produce social biography videos using limited resources, and how staff without any previous experience can be trained quickly to create effective videos.

Presented by Raj Jayadev, founder and director of Silicon Valley De-Bug