East Baton Rouge Advanced Advocacy Project

The Enhancements for Juvenile Defense program supports states and localities in developing and implementing tools and strategies to ensure that youth involved with the juvenile justice system have fair and equal access to high-quality legal representation and to resources that address the collateral consequences of justice system involvement.

The Louisiana Public Defender Board will integrate two social workers into its East Baton Rouge Office of the Public Defender (OPDBR), Juvenile Section, expanding their already successful pilot partnership with proposed subrecipient Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights (LCCR), called the Advanced Advocacy Project. This joint effort aims to serve indigent, predominantly African American youth in the juvenile justice system in the parish with the second highest juvenile incarceration rate in the State of Louisiana. The project’s goal is to reduce East Baton Rouge's juvenile incarceration population by adopting LCCR’s model of holistic juvenile defense for the children OPDBR serves. CA/NCF