CLICK Here to Download Registration Form
Seminar Information: 1:00 - 5:00 PM
U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District
650 Poydras Street, Ste. 1600
Program Description:
Louisiana is the highest incarcerating state in a nation that is the highest incarcerating country in the world. Over 36,000 inmates are currently being housed and over 70,000 being supervised. About 17,000 people are released each year from Louisiana prisons and jails to Louisiana communities. Of those released from incarceration in Louisiana, more than half (59%, according to Pew Charitable Trusts' Louisiana Data Analysis Part III and Survey Research) will return while under supervision.
One key factor to successful reentry is employment. A key factor to steady, gainful employment is transportation. Yet many of our returning citizens are unable to gain or regain their driving privileges because of unresolved misdemeanor (mostly traffic) charges and child support issues.
Louisiana is beginning to aggressively address its incarceration rate through a variety of means, including through a system of Re-Entry Courts, the Louisiana Offender Rehabilitation, Workforce Development Program at Angola, and LCIW. (See LSA-R.S. 5:1199.1
et seq. and LSA-R.S. 13:5401.) There are four such reentry courts in the Eastern District of Louisiana, including two in Orleans Parish, one in St. Tammany Parish and one in Jefferson Parish. These courts oversee the reentry of a relatively discreet group of returning citizens who have gone through extensive programming during a roughly 2-year period of incarceration at Angola or LCIW.
A coalition of organizations and stakeholders have developed a Re-Entry Court Pro Bono Program to address the legal needs of Re-Entry Court participants. The program seeks to train and assist attorneys in Jefferson, Orleans, St. Tammany, and Washington parish accept cases on a pro bono basis. We have scheduled a Continuing Legal Education program for December 13, 2016 to train an inaugural class of volunteers for the program.
At the CLE, you will learn about the reentry court program and the Reentry Court Legal Pro Bono Program as well as receive basic legal instruction on handling misdemeanor and child support matters.
To sign up, download, fill out, and send your completed registration form to the contact listed.