APPENDICES

APPENDIX A: NEW ORLEANS RJIP APPLICATION PACKET

APPENDIX B: OCTOBER 2010 GRANT CONTRACT

APPENDIX C: OCTOBER 2010 RJIP CONTRACT ADDENDUM

APPENDIX D: MR. KENNEDY PRELIMINARY DATA

APPENDIX E: NEW ORLEANS POWER POINT PRESENTATION ON DIVERSION,

NATIONAL PRETRIAL DIVERSION SYMPOSIUM

APPENDIX F: FEBRUARY 2011 RJIP REPORT

APPENDIX G: FEBRUARY 11 2011 LUNCHEON AGENDA AND TRAINING GUIDE

APPENDIX H: AUGUST 2011 RJIP REPORT

APPENDIX I: APRIL 2012 RJIP REPORT

APPENDIX J: JULY 24TH LUNCHEON AGENDA AND PROGRAM

APPENDIX K: JANUARY 2013 RJIP REPORT

Criminal Justice Sections

RACIAL JUSTICE IMPROVEMENT PROJECT

January 7, 2013 Task Force Report
Funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance
The ABA Criminal Justice Section and the Bureau of Justice Assistance would like to thank you for your
continued cooperation and dedication to the Racial Justice Improvement Project. We are nearing the end
of our first term for this project, and we will soon commence reform in four new sites! For this project,
you will have only one other reporting requirement, due on February 20 2013, or within three weeks of
completing your RJIP reform. This document serves as your reporting template for the January 7, 2013
Report. Please submit this completed document in word format (not PDF) to Safiedine.s@gmail.com by
no later than close of business January 7, 2013. Please type your answers in the spaces below and title
the document [your jurisdiction] January 7 Report. As one of the last reporting measures, please be as
thorough as possible in this report, even if it requires repeating information from other reports,
documents, or conversations. Please include as an attachment to your email submission, any relevant
documents that are referenced or requested. We thank you for your great efforts and look forward to
hearing from you in the New Year!

Jurisdiction: _New Orleans_____________________

1.
1.
1.
Date of Last Task Force Meeting:
_12.12.12__________
1.
1.
1.
1.
Date of Upcoming Task Force Meeting:
_1.30.13__________
1.
Please list the name and title of each RJIP task force member in your jurisdiction and
also include their email address. We will update our website with the names you list
below. (Please highlight the task force members who do not wish to have their email
address posted on our website). If you would like to remove a task force member that is
currently listed or make a change, please also state that below. You can find the list of
your jurisdictions task force members by visiting the projects website and finding Task
Force Information in the top menu, then by clicking on your jurisdiction in the dropdown menu.
Michael Bradley, Deputy Chief Public Defender, Orleans Public Defenders;
mbradley@opdla.org
Jee Park, Special Litigation Counsel, Orleans Public Defenders; jpark@opdla.org
Leon Cannizzaro, District Attorney, Orleans Parish District Attorneys Office;
emurphy@orelansda.com

The Honorable Laurie White, District Court Judge, Criminal District Court of Orleans Parish,
Sec. A; sectiona@crimnalcourt.org
Rosana Cruz, Associate Director, V.O.T.E (Voice of the Ex-Offender); rosana@vote-nola.org
2. Please explain the goal of your reform initiative and define measurable success of
your reform. How are you implementing the reform and producing outcome measures?
The New Orleans Task Force has chosen to expand and enhance the District Attorneys
existing Diversion Program. Prior to the Task Forces involvement, the District Attorneys office
maintained a successful diversion program. However, the Task Force believed that with
additional resources, more arrestees could be diverted out of the traditional criminal justice
system and could instead receive beneficial counseling via the Diversion Program. To that end,
the Task Force worked closely with the District Attorneys Office to develop Diversion Track I,
aimed at serving arrestees charged with non-violent property crimes.
The Task Force is also assisting the District Attorneys Office to receive technical
assistance for data tracking through the Center for Court Innovation. That assistance will the
District Attorneys Office to upgrade and update their existing data tracking software so that
Track I individuals can be tracked and the Task Force can assess the efficacy of its reform in
diverting low-level offenders from traditional prosecution.
Finally, on the heels of the successful Track I Pilot, the Task Force is working with the
District Attorneys Office and Orleans Parish Municipal Court to introduce a Prostitution
Diversion program. That program, in partnership with the local non-profit Women With A
Vision (WWAV), aims to reduce the number of prosecutions for prostitution and instead to divert
at risk sex workers to counseling and treatment programs via WWAV.
3.

Please explain your current status in completing your reform initiative.

Diversion Track I is currently underway as a pilot program serving up to fifty arrestees.

The Task Force designated a portion of its funds to pay for drug testing for those individuals. To
date, the program has successfully enrolled over twenty arrestees. The Task Force is hopeful that
at the conclusion of the pilot period (fifty arrestees) the District Attorneys office will continue
offering Diversion Track I on a permanent basis.
In addition, the Task Force worked with the District Attorneys Office to create English
and Spanish brochures explaining the diversion programs (both the new Diversion Track I
program and the pre-existing Diversion Treatment Program) so that eligible participants could
make informed decisions about whether or not to enroll.
In January, the Task Force anticipates completing contracting with the Center for Court
Innovation. Once the contract is complete, updating of the tracking software at the Diversion
Program should be completed within a month. The initial, informal estimate for that process is
attached.
The Task Force has promulgated proposed guidelines and requirements for the
Prostitution Diversion Program, and hopes that all stakeholders will agree to the contours of the
program by mid-spring, with a pilot launch in late spring/early summer.

4. What are your key milestone dates/deadlines leading up to the conclusion of your
sites reform and evaluation? Please include upcoming specific task force meeting dates,
specific or approximate dates for dissemination / promotion of project activities
(including press, luncheons, launches), and other important administrative / logistical
dates of your project. Please also state whether you would like assistance in the
promotion of your reform.
In January, the Task Force anticipates that the Diversion Office will receive Technical
Assistance from the Center for Court Innovation. Once that is complete, the Task Force will be
ready to complete the evaluation process for Diversion Track I. The Task Force is meeting on
January 30, 2013, to discuss the progress of this technical assistance as well as to continue the
negotiations regarding the implementation of the Prostitution Diversion Program. That
development of that program will likely continue beyond the formal dissolution of the Task
Force.
Diversion Track I was already formally launched in July at a luncheon at the Louisiana
State Bar Association, attended by stakeholders from across the criminal justice and political
community.
5. Please provide a brief paragraph summarizing your sites reform. In this 1
paragraph only statement, limit your information to what you feel comfortable posting
on our project website:
The New Orleans Racial Justice Improvement Project Task Force enhanced and expanded
the existing District Attorneys Diversion Program by working with the key stakeholders to
implement a targeted, more rapid diversionary option for offenders charged with low-level
property crimes. The Task Force felt that the existing Diversion Treatment Program was unduly
burdensome for first-time offenders without addiction issues, at that expansion of the program
would serve a population currently being burdened with convictions instead of receiving the
benefits of alternative to traditional prosecution. The Task Force also worked to improve
awareness about the availability of the diversion programs for all eligible arrestees, and has
begun to follow-up on the success of Diversion Track I by working to implement a Prostitution
Diversion Program in the Orleans Parish Municipal Court.
6. Have you gotten other criminal justice stakeholders to buy in to your reform and
assist with the implementation process, or have you collaborated with existing
projects and initiatives in your jurisdiction since choosing your reform effort? If so,
please list who and how they have contributed. Please also include any consulting
services you have sought or received from entities or individuals. Please also include
whether you have requested or added any entity representatives to serve on your task
force.
The Task Force, as initially composed, included most of the necessary criminal justice
stakeholders necessary for our reform, with the District Attorneys office being the most critical.
That said, it has been beneficial to get the buy in of the Criminal District Court Commissioners,
who can release eligible arrestees from their bond obligations on the condition that they report to
Diversion Intake upon their release. In addition, because Diversion Track I has a community

service component, we partnered with existing public service organizations, including the St.
Bernard Project and First Harvest Food Bank to provide community service opportunities to
Track I enrollees.
During the development of Diversion Track I, the Task Force also contracted with
Spurgeon Kennedy, a nationally recognized expert on diversion best practices, to provide
consulting services about the requirements of our program.
Lastly, as part of our ongoing efforts to enact a Prostitution Diversion program, we
received a supplement grant to send several task force members to Baltimore to meet with
Robert Weisengoff, who oversees Baltimores existing Prostitution Diversion Program, the
model for our proposal. As part of that initiative, we have included Deon Haywood, director of
Women With A Vision, in the task force meetings, as well as Municipal Court representatives
Judge Desire Charbonet and probation office Catherine Broussard.
7. Have you remained consistent with your policy reform and implementation plan
from October 2011? Please explain if you have deviated from your original plan.
Although in October 2011 we had not ironed out the details of the Diversion Track I, we
have generally stayed the course. The plans structure and goals have remained consistent.
8. Have you identified mechanisms to track and measure the effectiveness of your
reform? Have you met with the Project Evaluator? How are you tracking the
success of your reform overall and specific projects or programs that you have since
carried out? Do you have a formalized evaluation plan? If so, please attach your
evaluation plan to this report and briefly describe the process below. If you are still
working on your evaluation plan, when do you hope to have it completed?
Our project evaluator, Inga James, has developed an evaluation plan, attached. The
evaluation will entail quantitative and qualitative aspects. The quantitative aspect is dependent
on the collaboration with the Center for Court Innovation. That collaboration will yield the
necessary data for Ms. James to conduct a statistical analysis of the effectiveness of the program.
The qualitative aspect will come from Ms. Jamess interviews with diversion staff members
regarding the successes and failures of the Diversion Track I pilot program to date.
9. Have you been met with any new challenges in accomplishing your goals? If so, have
they been overcome? What were the lessons learned?
Choosing a reform area that every member of the Task Force was comfortable with was a
challenge because no agency wanted to be singled out to be scrutinized and critiqued by fellow
stakeholders in the criminal justice system. Choosing a reform that focused largely on policy
changes for one primary agency may not have been most prudent because the success of the
reform is too heavily weighted by what that single agency will or will not do. By choosing to
focus on the District Attorneys Offices diversion program and having to convince the DAs
Office that this was a worthy reform, the Task Force was in a constant negotiation mode with the
DAs Office, and the DAs Office was often in defensive posture trying to deflect anything that
appeared to criticize its existing diversion program. Despite the fact that the DAs existing
diversion program was overly burdensome to the participants and departed heavily in form and

execution from other diversion programs nationally, the DAs Office resisted suggestions to do
things differently. That is why instead of changing the existing program, the Task Force decided
to enhance diversion in general by creating another program to supplement the existing program.
In short, a reform that required policy changes from more than one agency may have been easier
to navigate
Additionally, we fell short of collecting all of the necessary data prior to embarking on our
reform. Again, Task Forces ability to collect data was controlled by how much data the DAs
Office was willing to share. Perhaps with a more eager partner, the Task Force could have had
access to comprehensive data re who qualifies for diversion, accepts diversion, completes
diversion, and fails out of diversion. Now that the DAs Office has embraced the new diversion
program and has received local recognition for its programming, I am hopeful that the DAs
office will be more forthcoming with the data regarding the Pilot.
10. At this point in the project, do you have any recommendations for eliminating or
modifying any steps in the projects replication?
The District Attorneys Office must be invested in starting a diversion program or revamping an
existing one. Every jurisdiction can benefit from a high functioning, effective diversion program
that diverts certain class of low-risk offenders out of the system. If the DAs Office is willing to
come to the table with an open mind and is willing to receive feedback from other criminal
justice stakeholders, including community members, about what low-level offenders need and
how to meet that need, then the process will be more harmonious.
Additionally, the DAs Office must be willing to share raw data with the Task Force members.
Without raw data, it is hard to measure and quantify the successes and shortcomings of a
program.
11. To date, what amount of grant funds (if any) do you have remaining? Do you have
plans to spend the remaining grant funds? Please explain. Please also attach a
simplified version of your project budget upon submission of this report.
Our attached budget shows that we have spent all but $10,591 to date. However, we have
also committed approximately $5,500 more to paying for the drug tests for the first 50 enrollees
in Diversion Track I. Further, we are going to contribute $3000 towards the cost of the technical
assistance from the Center for Court Innovation. The remainder will go towards incidentals such
as additional printing of Diversion brochures, meeting costs, etc.
12. Please identify supplemental funding and technical assistance needs below.
The project requires supplemental funding to pay for the upgrade to the Diversion Programs
data management software. This upgrade is via the Center for Court Innovation, with contracts
already being negotiated.

In addition, successful implementation of the Prostitution Diversion Program likely requires

some additional funding to offset the additional resource burden on Women With A Vision.
Additional funding could go towards WWAV hiring an additional counselor so that staffing
limitations do not restrict the number of eligible participants who can enroll in the Prostitution
Diversion Program.

APPENDIX L: JANUARY 2013 CCI CONTRACT

APPENDIX M: ADDENDUM TO CCI CONTRACT

APPENDIX N: JULY 2013 GRANT CONTRACT

APPENDIX O: MARCH 24 PEER TO PEER NYC SITE VISIT

APPENDIX P: MAY 10 2013 RJIP REPORT