Office of the Public Defender program in Baltimore takes holistic

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Mar 15, 2007 by Brendan Kearney

The Office of the Public Defender is expanding its role beyond courtroom representation to include help with re-entry back into the community in a move it hopes will eventually reduce its Baltimore clientele.

Modeled after existing programs in New York City, the office's Northwest Community Defense Project will attempt to address clients' civil legal service needs, in addition to their traditional criminal defense. Project Director Natalie Finegar said Wednesday the program will operate out of the city's Park Heights neighborhood.

The Baltimore location will be the second of two pilot programs in the state sponsored by the office. The first opened in Montgomery County last year.

Finegar, formerly the supervising attorney at Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center, said the emphasis on "problem solving." by considering the offender's entire set of issues, is a "growing movement in the public defender world."

"This is us looking at our clients' needs and connecting them to the services that they need and want to be successful," said Finegar. "While we have a clear mandate to represent criminal defense, we understand that the child support and the housing [issues] impact our clients."

Deputy Public Defender Michael Morrissette said the new emphasis on services outside simple defense of the client's criminal charge falls within the office's mandate of providing the "related and necessary services" for a client's criminal defense.

While office space has not been officially nailed down, Finegar said her office was in negotiations for a lease in Lower Park Heights, and would start accepting clients on May 9 regardless of whether the office was physically ready.

In addition to the director, the Park Heights office will be staffed by three circuit court attorneys, two district court attorneys, two paralegals, a social worker and a legal resources coordinator.

Finegar said all staff members, except for the legal resources coordinator, are already on payroll in their respective divisions. Morrissette classified the creation of the pilot office as a reshuffling of existing resources that would not require any additional funding.

The attorneys will handle cases as they do now. The social worker will engage in family outreach and help with program placement.

The legal resources coordinator will process referrals by connecting with service providers and help clients navigate record expungements, child non-support modifications, and searching for affordable housing, among other duties.

"Quite frankly, many of our attorneys were doing referrals, but now there's a person to go to instead of the defense attorney being a jack of all trades," Finegar said.

Finegar said the impetus for the pilot projects was Public Defender Nancy Forster's interest in "holistic representation models" that led to a series of trips to New York in April 2005 and April 2006 to examine existing programs there.

After witnessing the Bronx Defenders and the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, the office decided to open the two pilot projects in Maryland.

Finegar's previous job got her thinking beyond simply defending her clients against charges.

"During my time at Central Booking, I got a lot of opportunities to talk to clients outside their case," Finegar said. "You just get to hear people's ideas and aspirations for when they get out of jail. There's a whole host of issues they're interested in aside from the criminal case."

Over the intervening two years since Forster accepted her proposal to lead a pilot site in Baltimore, Finegar said she and her staff have been "trying to look at how we want the program to work, learning about services that are out there so we can make good referrals, and listening to the concerns of the community."

Montgomery County was chosen because it was "uniquely situated in terms of the amount of resources available" and because the staff is centrally located, said Deputy Public Defender Michael Morrissette.

"Based on anecdotal information, the Montgomery County project has been a great success," Morrissette said.

Finegar said Park Heights' status as "the biggest re-entry point in the state" attracted her to that part of the city. Southern Park Heights was named a primary ex-offender re-entry point in Maryland by a 2003 study by the Urban Institute, a national economic and social policy research organization.

"Our intention is to become part of the neighborhood, really embedding yourself in there, seeing - what we can do, and how we can partner," Finegar said.