As the attorneys, social workers, investigators and other staff representing the vast majority of people processed through the criminal legal system, we know what is going wrong. We are the witnesses, the advocates, the attorneys dedicated to fighting injustice for individuals and for everyone.
Today, there is unprecedented public interest and support for criminal legal reform, but often a lack of direction on how to achieve it. The criminal legal system is fixable only if understood as the sum of its interrelated parts, some broken and some intentionally designed to achieve exactly what we now have.
Public defenders see and understand how policies, practices and laws interact to drive mass incarceration. We have some ideas about how to fix the system.
Real life stories
Public defender expertise
Untangling complex issues
Local & targeted movements
Curated campaigns
Informed by first hand experience
Change laws
Demand accountability
End mass incarceration
Brooklyn Defender Services is a public defense office whose mission is to provide outstanding representation and advocacy free of cost to people facing loss of freedom, family separation and other serious legal harms by the government. We believe in a client-centered approach and work, in and out of court, to uphold the rights, freedom and dignity of people threatened by unjust, racist and harmful legal systems.
