Diversion of Justice (Page 2 of 3)

August 9, 2006
By: Knoxville Voice

On a tour of the Community Law Office building at 1101 Liberty Street, Stephens’ commitment to the community through public defense is evident. He begins the tour in a room in which the four walls are decorated with murals created by children participating in the office’s after-school program. “The idea is to find some way that kids can share some of what’s in their heads and in their hearts through art and writing, and we have local artists and volunteer who come in and help,” Stephens said.

The room leads into a hallway displaying artwork by area elementary students with the theme, “What does a great community look like to you?” The pictures depict families, friends, people of different colors holding hands and helping each other, and, of course, lots of places to play. This is the community vision Stephens attempts to create with the Community Law Office.

He glows as he steps into the gymnasium and recounts the annual Christmas party the office hosts there for youth in the Dependent Neglect unit of Knox County Juvenile Court. “We have a big turkey dinner, and I dress up like Santa Claus, and we have gifts and clothing for every kid,” Stephens said. “All employees participate, and we pick up things for the kids that have been falling through the cracks—each employee is assigned a family, and we talk to the guardian, find out what they want and need, and the employee buys the gifts and wraps them, using contributions from the local bar and the Leadership Knoxville office.”

Stephens said this innovative approach of holistic representation resulted from on-going meetings throughout the 1990s with Lenny Noisette, who operates the Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem. “These neighborhood offices were set up to be a full-service legal aid office to the poor providing both civil and criminal representation, and because people brought their problems with them to the office, then the lawyers tried to solve those problems, and the holistic way kind of crept in,” Stephens said.

His interaction with Noisette from 1999 to 2001 in the Executive Sessions think tank on indigent defense sponsored by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, inspired Stephens to develop his concept of the Community Law Office. He returned to Knoxville and, with the help of then-County Executive Tommy Shemper, secured the current building to implement his vision of holistic representation.

The Community Law Office soon recognized that the approach that had worked so well in New York City was also working in Knoxville. Meeting the social needs of clients and the community was effective: caseloads dropped and recidivism rates among participants decreased dramatically.

“We hired a woman, Susan Demette, who followed 400 people engaged in our social services and compared them with 400 people who were similarly situated in the office but not engaged in social services, and for a couple of years we saw tremendous success,” Stephens said. “The state recidivism rate of people coming out of the Tennessee Department of Corrections is in the 65 to 70 percent range. Among people who were here going through our social services and reentering the system, we were showing recidivism rates closer to 35 to 40 percent, so we were encouraged.”

Despite the programs’ successes, the office is now in a state of transition as the original grants have expired and funding shortfalls have required cuts in services and staff layoffs.

“Our problem is that it costs to have a social service component here, that means there has to be money to fund that, and there just doesn’t seem to be the will these days to fund alternatives to incarceration,” Stephens said. “Everybody’s afraid for their own political life in doing that, because in the abstract, ‘that’s not a good idea.’ In that abstract, black and white, intellectual discussion that people have about criminal justice, that doesn’t make much sense. That doesn’t make sense until it’s some commissioner’s brother or commissioner’s son or judge’s nephew or somebody’s living breathing soul, and then once it becomes human, and that human has a group of people who love him or her, then it’s another conversation.”