Vera Institute of Justice

Overview

The final report on the initial set of grants for the National Defender Leadership Project (NDLP) details the project's aims, activities and accomplishments during the first four years. NDLP was a response to a persistent problem: public defenders' absence when criminal justice policy was being set. Judges, police chiefs, prosecutors and sheriffs were used to collaborating. Defenders were often unsure how to make their perspectives known and suffered accordingly. The criminal justice system works only when all of its components—law enforcement, prosecution and defense—play an equal role, and with defenders in the background, it was off balance.