Please join the JPO and the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (APA) on Thursday, September 13 at 2 p.m. EDT for an engaging webinar where they will discuss the role prosecutors play in ensuring the constitutional right to counsel. They will also discuss the findings of R2C roundtable that was held with prosecutors in December 2017 about their role in ensuring the right to counsel and effective public defense delivery systems.

Panelists include Marlene Biener, Deputy General Counsel at the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, Justin Bingham, City Prosecutor of Spokane, Washington, and Genevieve Citrin Ray, Senior Policy Advisor and R2C Project Director at the Justice Programs Office at American University.

Stay tuned for more information and register here!

PJI and JPO are hosting a Twitter chat using #right2counsel on September 12 at 2:00 p.m. EDT on the role public defenders play in the movement to improve pretrial justice.

We would like to invite public defender organizations, offices, community partners, and other stakeholders to participate in this chat by advertising the chat to your followers, answering questions PJI and JPO pose on Twitter, and engaging with other participants to create a robust conversation on the topic of public defense in pretrial reform using #right2counsel.

Please contact Katie Nelson, katie@pretrial.org, if you would like to participate or have any questions.

Register here! http://bit.ly/22QjEfj

As part of National Reentry Week, the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) Right to Counsel Initiative at American University will hold a "virtual townhall" on the role of indigent defense service providers in reentry on Thursday April 28, 2016 at 2:00 PM EST. The event will highlight three jurisdictions that are providing services to returning citizens through their public defender offices: Washington, DC; Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; and Lee County, South Carolina. Panelists will also address funding, stakeholder buy-in, successes, and challenges.

The session will be highly interactive and will be moderated by Tracy Velázquez, Associate Director of the Justice Programs Office at American University. The event will last between 60-75 minutes depending on the number of questions attendees have. The first 30 minutes will be devoted to brief presentations and moderator questions. The rest of the event will be devoted to questions by attendees. We encourage attendees to submit comments and accompanying material in advance to citrin@american.edu if desired. Panelists include Jamie Rodriguez, Dean Beer, and Aleksandra Chauhuan and other program staff.

Watch the video of the remote townhall here!

Presented by the National Association for Public Defense

This webinar will provide an overview of the Right to Counsel National Campaign launched by the Bureau of Justice Assistance of the US Department of Justice and coordinated by the Justice Programs Office at the School of Public Affairs at American University. The campaign is spearheaded by a national consortium of national, state and local justice system stakeholders, policymakers, and community advocates. The purpose of the campaign is to raise awareness about the importance of ensuring the Sixth Amendment Right to Counsel is meaningfully carried out and that the systemic structures needed are in place to make “Equal Justice Under Law” a reality. The project entails a broad research effort that will include public opinion polling on perceptions of the right to counsel. Building on the results of these polls and other data gathered from traditional and non-traditional sources that will be discussed in this webinar, the campaign will develop action plans with its consortium members to promote the development of effective defense delivery systems that can be put into place in a wide array of settings.

Learn more and register for the webinar at http://www.publicdefenders.us/?q=node/989.

Presented by the National Association of Counties

Individuals who are held in jail before trial have been shown to have worse outcomes, from higher risk of unemployment to greater risk of reoffending. Providing counsel as soon as possible for a person who has been arrested or detained can help ensure that low-risk individuals are not held simply because they cannot afford bail, which saves counties money and mitigates the detrimental effects of detention. Learn how several counties provide counsel at the earliest opportunity and the benefits they have seen from this practice.

Register via this link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4525638610307100161