Page 216 - 2021bogOrientationManual

Standing Committees staffed by Access to Justice

Children’s Law Committee, Co-Chairs Otha “Curtis” Nelson, Jr. and Jesse George
The LSBA Children's Law Committee was established to provide a forum through which
attorneys and judges working with children can promote improvements and changes in the legal
system which benefits children, parents, and the professionals who serve these families. Over the
past several years, the Committee has emphasized the needs of youth in foster care and/or those
experiencing “Child in Need of Care” (CINC) proceedings. The Committee created
professionally-produced videos on foster care and CINC procedures and a mobile app and
physical brochure (Becoming an Adult) on the legal rights of young people transitioning out of
foster care. In 2019, the Committee coordinated a presentation for students on the rights of
special needs students. The Committee has been focused on how to implement trauma-informed
practices in the court system and successfully advocated for a Children’s Law section under the
LSBA’s Opinions Law Service. Most recently, the Committee’s Education Work Group invited
the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office to discuss priorities identified during the DA’s
“Disrupt the School to Prison Pipeline” Public Listening Session. Children’s Law Committee
members co-hosted (with the LSPD Committee) a virtual skills training session with students at
Tulane University Law School where students took turns practicing hypothetical interviews with
people with disabilities. The Committee is working with Loyola University College of Law to
host a similar training in the Fall.

Criminal Justice Committee, Co-Chairs Jean Faria and Graham Bosworth
The mission of the Criminal Justice Committee is to recognize and address issues affecting the
Louisiana criminal justice system, provide a forum for discussion, and work with stakeholders to
develop programs and solutions for fair and effective administration of justice. Representing a
diverse group of stakeholders in Louisiana’s Criminal Justice System, the Committee brings
together LSBA members from all sides to carry out its mission.

For seven years, the Criminal Justice Committee has hosted a Criminal Justice Summit in Baton
Rouge to engage criminal justice leaders from across the state in a series of highly interactive
work sessions, focusing on ways to address systemic issues including funding, incarceration
rates, mental health, and sentencing reform.

In 2012, the Committee worked with the Louisiana State Law Institute’s Expungement Reform
Task Force to bring stakeholders together and develop recommendations for a revised
expungement statute that would improve the process and make clearing criminal records
available for more people. In 2016, the committee created resources to assist private attorneys
appointed in criminal cases and increase transparency of the funding crisis in the criminal justice
system (www.lsba.org/cjc). In 2017, the committee focused on the work of the Justice
Reinvestment Task Force created under 2015 HCR 82 to analyze the drivers of Louisiana’s
incarceration rates and provide recommendations to reduce incarceration and use the cost savings
to reinvest in areas that provide for continued reduction in incarceration and recidivism rates.
Based on this work, the committee proposed Resolution 9, approved by the House of Delegates