This assessment of access to counsel and quality of representation that children receive in delinquency proceedings in the State of North Carolina is part of a nationwide effort to address deficiencies and identify strengths in juvenile indigent defense practices. Over thirty-five years after the United States Supreme Court decided that children have a constitutional right…

This assessment of access to counsel and quality of representation that children receive in delinquency proceedings in the Commonwealth of Virginia is part of a nationwide effort to address deficiencies and identify strengths in juvenile indigent defense practices. Thirty-five years after the United States Supreme Court decided that children have a constitutional right to counsel,…

This reassessment of access to counsel and quality of representation in Kentucky delinquency proceedings is part of a local and national movement to continually review indigent defense delivery systems and evaluate how effectively attorneys in juvenile court are fulfilling constitutional and statutory obligations to their clients. This study is designed to provide broad information about…

Central to this report is whether youth are receiving adequate counsel in the justice system and, concomitantly, whether the lack of defense services has a substantive, harmful impact on these children and their families. The data collected, comments from children, families, and professionals working within the system all suggest that the fallout from inadequate defense…

This report identifies systemic barriers to fair defense for children, evaluates consequences of such barriers in the juvenile justice system, describes ways in which judges, attorneys, and counties have attempted to address these barriers, and makes recommendations for improving the current system of indigent defense services for children.

The purpose of this report is to: Identify the ways in which the state of Texas provides legal representation to poor children in the justice system; Determine how this legal representation is funded; Pinpoint the characteristics of the system which encourage or impede lawyers’ abilities to serve their juvenile clients; and Gauge the access children…

In the fall of 1993, the American Bar Association Juvenile Justice Center, in conjunction with the Youth Law Center and Juvenile Law Center, received funding from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to initiate the Due Process Advocacy Project. The intent of the project is to build the capacity and effectiveness of…