TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Julia Wilburn on Mar 16, 2023

Tennessee’s Public Defender Social Worker program pairs defendants who cannot afford a lawyer with social workers to help address underlying issues like poverty, addiction or homelessness, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is praising the program as a model for other states. “The criminal justice system is just not designed to help people who have mental health issues,” says Rachel Rossi, the director of the Office for Access to Justice at the DOJ. “And what bringing a social worker into the conversation does is it really allows us to get to the actual core of the issue and to actually heal and help and provide resources and support so that a person is not just cycling in and out of jail over and over and over.” WPLN has the story.