We have officially passed the one-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on and acknowledge what we all have overcome. The Office of Criminal Justice Coordination (OCJC), our justice system stakeholders, community partners, and citizens have worked tirelessly over the last year to respond to the challenges of social distancing, remote work, and altered operations. We have made personal sacrifices for the safety of our community and pushed ourselves professionally to think outside of the box and meet the challenges of operating in new and different ways. It has been a difficult year, but I believe we have emerged on the other side stronger, more flexible, and more determined to push forward together to make New Orleans the best it can be. 

This newsletter highlights just a few things that the OCJC staff and partners have been able to accomplish over the last few months. We will continue to work diligently to fight for our vision of humane and equitable justice for all people while fostering safe and flourishing communities. 

Thanks to the work of an interagency partnership facilitated by the Office of Criminal Justice Coordination (OCJC), Criminal Court defendants are now able to receive mobile text reminders for upcoming court dates. SMS reminders are commonplace in many industries; however, applying this technology within the justice system required cooperation and business process changes across several agencies, in addition to data integrations spanning across four distinct IT systems hosted on both legacy and modern technology platforms. This was made possible thanks to the collaboration of the Criminal District Court, the Office of Criminal Justice Coordination, the City’s Office of Information Technology and Innovation, the Orleans Public Defenders Office, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, and the Louisiana Public Defenders Board.

Working together, agencies agreed that the Orleans Public Defenders were best positioned to manage the “customer” end of the notification system (i.e., the defendants). This included collecting cell numbers, obtaining Federal Communications Commission-mandated consent for each defendant, setting the rules for when a reminder should go out, and managing the message content of the reminders for each type of event. These business rules and protocols were resolved, and now OCJC, City IT, and our justice system partners are set to push court event data from the Court’s mainframe IT system (maintained by the Sheriff’s Office) to the City’s data warehouse as new events are generated by District Attorney filings and courtroom proceedings. Event data is then pushed nightly from the City’s data warehouse to the statewide public defender case management software (“DefenderData”) via a linked server connection. At the request of OCJC, the Public Defender Board then integrates DefenderData with a third-party text notification service, thus enabling automated text notifications to be sent to defendants ahead of each court event.

Thanks to these efforts, defendants will miss fewer court dates, fewer system resources will be squandered on cancelled and rescheduled hearings, fewer defendants will be jailed on “alias capias” arrest warrants, and victims and their families will receive speedier justice. This seemingly simple but complex use of technology is just one example of how the partnerships fostered by OCJC under the Criminal Justice Information Sharing (CJIS) Committee tangibly improves the quality and efficiency of our entire justice system. All partners are especially pleased to have this service available since the Supreme Court has lifted the moratorium on jury trials, which will resume April 1 in the Criminal District Court.

Every year, through the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) of 1984, funding is awarded by the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Criminal Justice for the provision of direct services to victims of crime. The OCJC Grants Department assists with and oversees the administration of these grants and is proud to highlight the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court’s (OPJC) Calming Studio as an innovative project that is making an impact!

This Calming Studio is a unique concept that provides a therapeutic atmosphere for children and youth that are involved in hearings at OPJC. As a designated therapeutic space, children can learn various coping skills that help to diminish any stress or trauma associated with the youth’s participation in court proceedings. These coping skills can be further utilized in everyday events that may happen in the child’s life. The Calming Studio is designed and furnished to provide an area with low stimuli where youth and families can focus on mindfulness and de-stressing activities. The practitioner in the Calming Studio further works with children and caregivers, teaching them various calming techniques that decrease anger, aggressiveness, irritation, sadness, and other emotions that are experienced when a child is triggered, to prevent these triggers from manifesting into negative thoughts or behavior

On March 16, 2020 the team at The First 72+ suspended in-person activities at their office. By March 17, they converted their intake system into an over-the-phone process, dramatically expanded the capacity of their Public Benefits Clinic to accommodate the sharp increase in unemployment applications and applications for food stamps, purchased a Zoom membership to continue to meet with clients in the Reentry Legal Clinic, and started enlisting the help of pro-bono attorneys to help them get medically-vulnerable people out of state and federal prisons. By mid-April, they saw demand for their reentry transitional housing program increase exponentially, and as a result, they decided to get creative. Although COVID-19 had devastated one of the most important industries in New Orleans (tourism), it also created a unique opportunity for The First 72+ to book many vacant AirBnB rentals. Also, in partnership with Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), they raised money to rent hotel rooms where recently-released individuals could quarantine before returning to their families’ homes. By July, The First 72+ had grown from being able to provide housing to six men at a time at their flagship transitional house on Perdido Street, to being able to provide housing to over 50 people at a time, including, in partnership with Operation Restoration, women and parents with children. In the one year since they closed their office, The First 72+ has provided housing to 92 people, along with supportive services to over 400 other people and families.

This work was covered by multiple national news outlets, including The New Yorker, which featured a piece telling the story of how they helped secure early release for a pregnant woman on the eve of her due date so that she would not be separated from her baby. Today, that client has been able to reunite with all of her children, secure a rental apartment, and she is running a small business. The Marshall Project also covered their struggle to help clients secure vital records during the COVID-19 shutdown, and BuzzFeed News covered their work to increase availability of the vaccine for formerly-incarcerated individuals. Unfortunately, as many of us know all too well from the past year, this period was also marked by tragic loss. In November, The First 72+ was rocked by the death of their co-founder and co-executive director, Ben Smith. Smith was a fixture of the New Orleans political and non-profit scene for over five decades. His company, Da Grill Catering, has likely employed more formerly incarcerated people than any other business in New Orleans. Our world feels less full without Smith’s massive presence, but The First 72+ is fiercely committed to carrying on his legacy with dignity and honor.

Kate Hoadley joined OCJC in October of 2020 as part of the AmeriCorps VISTA cohort attached to the Mayor’s office. A recent graduate of Bowdoin College, where she earned a degree in Africana Studies and Economics, Kate was recruited to support in the standing up of the Ethnic and Racial Disparities working group under the Safety and Justice Challenge. Kate’s academic background put her in good stead to develop a framework for the working group that reflected up-to-date contemporary thinking on race and its influence on criminal justice. It is through her initiative and meticulous hard work to establish meaningful communication with and between partners that has positioned the working group to serve as an effective and self-directing body, connecting expertise and experience from stakeholders throughout the parish in the service of greater equity. Additionally, Kate provides project support for other Safety & Justice Challenge projects and is taking a leading role in the analysis of length-of-stay patterns in the Parish jail. Kate has also developed a new social media strategy for the Office to create engagement and broaden the public’s familiarity with our efforts. Entering in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Office has asked a lot of Kate, and she has consistently delivered with intelligence and good cheer.