The Georgia Justice Project turns lives around through aggressive defense, holistic relationships%%%
__By Douglas Ammar__

SOMEWHERE IN GEORGIA: It’s deep in the night on a lonely road. The attorney jumps out of her car and runs toward her client, the contract for him to join Georgia Justice Project and avoid jail in her outstretched hand. Just then, a police helicopter tops a nearby hill and its nightsun searchlight paints the two in a hot white blaze. “Stay where you are, and keep your hands where we can see them,” orders the faceless voice over the chopper’s loudspeaker.
The chopper lands, officers surround the attorney and client, slam her client onto the hood of her car and cuff him. “I didn’t turn you in,” she says. “Nobody else knew, bitch,” he spits back at her. “Scraping puke off the sidewalk again, counselor?” sneers one of the officers. “He’s not resisting,” she says.
“What’s this?” asks the officer, looking at the Georgia Justice Project contract. “Hmm,” he begins reading, “Number one, you must demonstrate your commitment to turning your life around by following the rules listed herein.” He looks up. “You really think this piece of scum wants to change his life? He’s been a gangbanger since he was 13. Didn’t you used to be smarter, counselor?”

“I think you and I are both about as smart as we ever were,” she says. “This is a hoot,” says the officer. “I’m framing it. You want a receipt?”

(An excerpt from a fictional script draft of a Hollywood television series, based on Georgia Justice Project. The script was written, considered and then shelved by executives at a major network).

It is a fascinating story, perhaps worthy of Hollywood treatment because it is such a unique story. When we were approached out of the blue about a possible television pilot based on the Georgia Justice Project, we gave our consent for producers to proceed. And yet, while Hollywood’s fleeting interest in the Georgia Justice Project peaked and then waned last year, probably because of potential competition from other “cops and crime” shows, we will continue to do the good works we have been involved in for 18 years and counting – whether Hollywood notices or not.

The Deep South is not a place you would expect to find a group of lawyers and social workers working together, with private money, to provide aggressive legal defense for poor people accused of crimes. Nor is it a place you’d think those lawyers and social workers would stand by their clients — often for years — until they complete special rehabilitative programs, regain their self respect and get back on their feet as productive citizens. But the poor downtown neighborhoods of Atlanta are exactly where such a unique, holistic program was born in 1986 – and flourishes today.

For 18 years, the Georgia Justice Project, an indigent defense and self-help organization unique in America, has been quietly providing hope and a brighter future for poor defendants charged in criminal cases who agree to enter into a contract to participate in the GJP’s rehabilitative programs in return for aggressive legal defense. With no government grants, the Georgia Justice Project has represented more than 1700 poor defendants, and at the same time has provided them with drug and alcohol abuse counseling, educational services, behavioral guidance and job training through a landscaping company the GJP created just for that purpose. The Horizon Landscaping Co. with an annual budget of $282,000, turned a profit three times last year.

What makes the Georgia Justice Project even more exceptional — and worthy of replication throughout the U.S. — is that its staff of eight full-time and two part-time employees is dedicated to a long-term, holistic approach of providing the GJP’s wide array of personal and professional services to its indigent clients. And, we do it on an overall annual budget of just $487,000, made up entirely of donations.

!!The numbers tell the story
Only 50 percent of GJP’s clients are convicted (national average is 77 percent), and less than 7 percent go to jail or prison, compared to 71 percent nationally. In the event that a GJP client is incarcerated after sentencing, staff or volunteers will visit the client during incarceration in prison and will welcome him or her back into the GJP fold upon release — where they may re-enter the GJP’s programs in order to try again to get their lives back together. Today, the GJP has 30 prison clients who are served through the same holistic approach as its free clients.

Of 590 requests for service in 2003, only 79 cases were taken. During 2003, the GJP’s dismissal rate was 75 percent. Less then 2 percent of all clients served in 2003 received incarceration after their case. Also during 2003, the GJP’s social services staff made 299 client contacts. Our programs are rigorous and our rules are strict, and those clients who stray from their contract with GJP soon may find themselves out of the program.

The GJP’s research shows the program works statistically as well. While the average recidivism rate for all persons convicted of a crime is about 60 percent, the GJP’s studies since 1996 show that less than 19 percent of its clients are ever incarcerated again. That certainly cuts into the ripple effect of pain and suffering created by a criminal act and incarceration. However, in terms of financial impact, the GJP’s efforts are saving Georgia hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in court-related and incarceration expenses by keeping people out of the legal system, out of prison and in a job.

So, how did the Georgia Justice Project come about? That itself is a great story. The GJP founder John A. Pickens, a successful litigator at a leading downtown Atlanta law firm, left a lucrative law practice and promising career to follow a calling to provide legal help for poor people in Atlanta. “Too often, people get out of jail, and six weeks later they’d be right back in jail,” says Pickens, now executive director of the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. “I felt like there needed to be programs in place, waiting for them, so they’d have a realistic chance of starting out on the right foot.”

!!This effort works without government grants
And finally, how is the GJP funded? GJP’s board of directors is composed of a diverse group of 16 business executives, clergy, academics, professionals and one former client work their magic of fundraising among Atlanta’s churches, foundations, businesses, law firms and concerned citizens. The GJP’s supporters are so dedicated that the group completed a $1.1 million campaign in less than three months in order to move into its new offices in an old, renovated service station in the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic District in 2002.

The fact that we are less than 100 feet from the tomb of the Rev. King is in a way symbolic of our small role in a grand and ongoing movement, a quiet crusade that seeks to bring some sense of peace into a world torn by crime and its products of heartache, pain and suffering.

One of the keynote speakers at the dedication of our new offices was then; Deputy U.S. Attorney General Larry Thompson, a former Atlanta who expressed both personal and professional interest in the GJP as a potential model for other such programs in the nation. “Groups like Georgia Justice Project fulfill the unmet needs of our communities with compassion and faith that can turn tragedy into hope,” Thompson said during the dedication of our new offices in the old service station.

!!A new way of lawyering
The limits on traditional lawyering are starting to be challenged by the emergence of groups such as the GJP that are pushing the role of the lawyer to new limits. In other words, the national story is not just what the GJP is doing, but how broken the system is and how broken traditional lawyering for the poor is. And, how innovative approaches are creeping up around the edges to create new methods of service delivery – new methods of addressing difficult societal problems. For 18 years, the GJP has been quietly pioneering innovative approaches to new methods of service delivery – and the statistics show our approach is working.

During the Georgia Justice Project’s observance of the 40th anniversary of Gideon vs. Wainwright in 2003, U.S. Rep. John Lewis was our keynote speaker. “There are fundamental rights and protections that all Americans and all humans are entitled to,” Lewis told the crowd that night. “Many think we have always had the right to counsel, but in truth, this protection came about only four decades ago. And, in fighting for the legal rights of poor people, the Georgia Justice Project has taken that right to its next level. Here in the heart of the South, a new form of lawyering is taking hold, with the Georgia Justice Project in the lead.”

This articles was Published in the Jan/Feb 2004 issue of
Champion Magazine.