20151216-93238-19

Initial teleconference with site to collect information about site's project, describe TTA role, and plan for future meetings. Ongoing communication and planning through email.

Near the beginning of this reporting period, in January, NLADA conducted a site visit with Smart Defense New York City at the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ). NLADA and the site team met with a number of stakeholders – institutional defenders, assigned counsel plan administrators, Bar Association representatives, the Department of Finance, and supervising judges – to better understand the history and administration of the assigned counsel plan, and to solicit ideas for how it could be improved. Smart Defense New York City found the site visit to be a great opportunity to coordinate with other stakeholders.

During the site visit, NLADA & NCJA identified a few key opportunities and challenges and the project. First, an existing data collection system seemed to have more functionality than previously anticipated, which indicated that it was worth exploring whether it needed to be totally replaced (as was originally proposed) or merely updated. As a result, NLADA & NCJA connected Smart Defense NYC to court administrators in Austin, Texas to learn more about their assigned counsel vouchering system as a possible model. Second, there was a lack of clarity among the stakeholders about who has ultimate authority over the assigned counsel system. NLADA recommended a subject matter expert who was part of the process of reorganizing the assigned counsel system and can help map out lines of authority in order to plan for reform; Smart Defense NYC has since been collaborating with this expert. Finally, in light of these new insights, NLADA & NCJA helped the practitioners and researchers of Smart Defense NYC revise the scope of the project and their division of labor. In March, NLADA met with one of the researchers on the team in Washington, DC, to work out what should go in to a needs assessment of the assigned counsel plan and how to communicate with the practitioners about the ongoing work on the project without damaging the integrity of the research. NLADA has continued to monitor the implementation of its recommendations during monthly TA calls.

On May 23, NLADA met with the project team at the Smart Defense Inter-site Summit. NLADA designed the Summit to foster collaboration both between researchers and practitioners in each site and between sites. Smart Defense New York City connected with the other sites working on assigned counsel systems improvements, especially Smart Defense Kentucky. At the Summit, the researchers from Smart Defense New York City gave an engaging presentation about indigent defense performance measurement work they had previously completed as part of BJA’s Answering Gideon’s Call program in Massachusetts; other sites found this example useful and inspiring for their own work.

NLADA and NCJA provided ongoing communication and planning through phone and email to Smart Defense grantee, the New York City Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ), and its research partner, the Center for Court Innovation (CCI). During this reporting period, activities of MOCJ and CCI focused on conducting a thorough needs assessment of the Assigned Counsel Plan (ACP) and exploring options for bolstering the City’s case management system for the ACP. For the case management system, extensive consideration was given to developing a new system in-house from scratch or engaging with a vendor to tailor an existing product to the City’s needs. NLADA assisted MOCJ with identification of and contracting with a Subject Matter Expert, Professor Steve Zeidman, who is providing historic perspective and policy guidance on possible changes to improve the ACP.

NLADA and NCJA provided ongoing communication and planning through phone and email to Smart Defense grantee, the New York City Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ), and its research partner, the Center for Court Innovation (CCI). During this reporting period the Smart Defense team secured funding for seven additional staff members to support the Assigned Counsel Panel’s (ACP’s) administrators. Historically, just two ACP administrators have overseen 1100 private attorneys (who handle New York City’s homicides and conflict of interest cases) without any data about these attorneys’ performance. The Smart Defense project conducted a needs assessment of the ACP and mapped out the complicated legal oversight mechanisms for the system. This information helped MOCJ bring stakeholders together to submit a joint proposal for a new vouchering system – to include performance data tracking – to the Mayor’s Office of Management and the Budget. The New York Smart Defense team feels certain that without the Smart Defense work, there would never have been additional resources provided for the ACP system. The grant provided the opportunity for broad stakeholder engagement around the needs of the long-neglected ACP system.

NLADA and NCJA provided ongoing communication and planning through phone and email to Innovative Solutions in Public Defense grantee, the New York City Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ), and its research partner, the Center for Court Innovation (CCI). During this reporting period the site experienced two significant challenges in the areas of capacity to manage the data set they intend to work with and in the size of the data set itself as having the potential to be perceived as larger than is consistent with their contract. The site is currently in the process or negotiating their contract to try to overcome that issue.
To further address these issues, during this reporting period, the site was able to meet with one of two presiding judges and is planning to meet with the second in the next few weeks. These meetings are a great step forward in receiving sign off on the project data set needs assessment. Additionally, the site is in the process of positioning senior leadership and the case management system built out for project execution.

During this reporting period, the NLADA/NCJA TTA team held regular check in calls with Innovative Solutions grantee, New York City Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ), and its research partner, the Center for Court Innovation (CCI), to provide advice, feedback and encouragement for project progress.

The NYC Innovative Solutions project seeks to plan for and initiate implementation of improvements to the City’s assigned counsel program (known alternately as the 18-B program or Assigned Counsel Plan). The project team has made great strides with MOCJ and Court leadership in laying the groundwork for long-needed improvements to the ACP’s data collection capacity and program oversight, including a detailed needs assessment prepared by CCI, commitment by MOCJ to add additional ACP staff, and recommendations regarding a new case management system that will be put in place. Implementation of the plans has been slower to materialize due to factors outside the control of MOCJ project staff. Additional state monies to improve the NYC ACP are slated to be forthcoming due to recent legislative change.

The slow pace of seeing the City hire staff needed to operationalize the recommendations of the Innovative Solutions project was cause for frustration by the two long-term ACP administrators. In June the TTA team facilitated a call between the two ACP administrators and the MOCJ/CCI staff who are pushing for the implementation of project recommendations.

The NYC Innovative Solutions project sought to plan for and initiate implementation of improvements to the City’s assigned counsel program (known alternately as the 18-B program or Assigned Counsel Plan (ACP)). Through this project, the grantee, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) developed an executed a rigorous qualitative research study that resulted in the production of a 50-plus-page needs assessment that provided recommendations on fifteen identified problem areas. MOCJ also secured an additional $525,000 in city tax levy for the Office of the Assigned Counsel Plan to hire five (5) additional staff members, as well as $3.2 million in capital funds to redesign the ACP’s IT system and improve data collection. During this reporting period, the NLADA/NCJA TTA team provided input to the grantee about the final report format. In November NLADA responded to questions from one of the two Assigned Counsel Plan administrators, who was concerned that external messaging by the TTA Team and MOCJ’s research partner, the Center for Court Innovation (CCI), about the work inflated progress that was actually happening on the ground. After conferring with BJA, MOCJ, and the ACP supervisor, NLADA made very small edits to an archived (July 2017) Smart Defense newsletter re-capping MOCJ’s portrayal of the effect of its grant project. (There was concern that the newsletter suggested that the grant had led to new ACP staff members who were in place rather than that the grant led to new staff authorizations for the ACP. Job postings for the roles were circulated in September 2018.)