Ordinarily, legal issues are wrapped up with some socioeconomic problem: evictions concern housing insecurity, criminal justice involvement occurs with mental health issues, debt collection indicates lack of financial wellbeing, or SNAP benefits implicate food insecurity. The A2J Lab investigates whether resolution of legal issues improves indicators of socioeconomic wellbeing, and vice versa.
Current Projects
Community Diversion Program
The Setting: This project will interrogate the effectiveness of a light-touch court-led diversion program that educates persistent low-level offenders about crime risk factors and connects them to community resources to address socio-economic needs as a strategy to prevent further engagement with the criminal justice system.
The Problem: Light-touch diversion programs could benefit many, including those incarcerated predisposition due to inability to meet court-imposed release conditions, such as paying money bail, finding an open slot in monitoring or treatment programs, or identifying a permanent residence. In addition, light-touch diversion programs (such as the one studied here) could help those guilty of offenses whose comparatively minor significance makes it difficult to justify (morally, fiscally, and legally) a more intrusive or punitive intervention. In both instances, any benefits would likely inure disproportionately to minority communities, the impoverished, the homeless, and those in need of specialized mental health treatment. The lightness of the touch, and thus the reduced expense, of the program makes it a likely subject of replication. But these benefits will manifest only if light-touch programs succeed in reducing recidivism and improving lives. If not, the criminal justice system must confront tough choices. Likely, the system must either explore more intrusive interventions that will be difficult to justify given the low-level nature of the triggering offenses (or the defendant’s pre-guilt status) or confront the prospect of decriminalizing certain behavior.
The Questions: The research questions are: Does light-touch court-led diversion addressing root causes of risky behavior reduce continued arrests/citations, charges, and convictions among persistent low-level offenders? Does light-touch diversion’s connection with community-based social services improve the housing and employment stability of its participants?
The Study: To understand the effectiveness of the diversion program targeted here, the Access to Justice (A2J) Lab will conduct a randomized control trial (RCT). It will randomly assign consenting study participants to either the diversion program (the “Diversion Group”) or the typical prosecutorial criminal justice process (the “Status Quo Group”).
What We’ll Learn: We will use official/administrative records to understand program effects on criminal case outcomes, recidivism (arrests, charges, and convictions), housing, and employment stability. We will also attempt to investigate whether the diversion program’s connection to community service organizations is enough to increase service take-up.
Research Team:
Access to Justice Lab
Toledo Municipal Court
Resources:
“Toledo Municipal Court Announces Study of Cutting-Edge Diversion Program,” Toledo Municipal Court press release
“Study of Community Diversion Program Launches,” Access to Justice blog, Harvard Law School
Embedded Legal Services as a Child Welfare and Justice System Primary Prevention Strategy
The Setting: This project will field a randomized controlled trial (“RCT”) of a program that integrates poverty-focused holistic legal and social work services into medical and educational settings that include mandated reporters.
The Problem: The law requires certain professionals (“mandated reporters”) to report to local child protective services (“CPS”) agencies what those professionals perceive as potential child abuse or neglect. Because these mandated reporters—for example, physicians or teachers–lack alternatives, they sometimes also refer to CPS cases that they do not have to report and might prefer not to report if there were an option other than CPS to attempt to address the situation. To reiterate, these optional reports are for cases near the margin – cases for which, if there were another alternative, reporters would not refer to CPS. Mandated reporters inform the A2J Lab that many of these “marginal cases” exist. These marginal cases often share some characteristics of instances of actionable neglect but might more accurately be characterized as resulting from poverty and its associated legal consequences. If so, then the problems could be susceptible to poverty-focused social and legal assistance (such as help with benefits applications, bankruptcy, or domestic violence protection orders) instead of CPS’ more punitive approach.
The Questions: The hypothesis is that such poverty-focused services will reduce the frequency with which these marginal cases are reported to CPS. In particular, the hope is that there will be fewer reports to CPS that result in “no-action” determinations, i.e., cases in which CPS investigates (thus imposing harm on the family) but takes no action (thus providing no benefit to the family).
The Study: This project will evaluate the impact of embedded holistic legal and social work services in a medical care facility serving eight counties in and around Columbia, South Carolina and an early childhood educational facility in Douglas County, Kansas. The study is a randomized control trial (RCT), in which patients presenting at the sites are randomly assigned to receive either full scope help from the multidisciplinary legal and social work team at the Carolina Health Advocacy Medicolegal Partnership (CHAMPS), housed in the University of South Carolina School of Law, in South Carolina, or the Kansas Holistic Defenders (KHD) in Kansas, or comprehensive self-help materials to attempt resolve the issues on their own without help from the legal and social work teams.
CHAMPS and KHD’s current client-bases most often present with issues of accessing Supplemental Security Income (SSI), accessing housing and homelessness resources as well as avoiding evictions, and managing individual education plans or enrolling in school. CHAMPS and KHD also serve clients needing to access food insecurity services; family planning including custody arrangements as well as domestic violence and intimate partner violence assistance; health benefits such as Medicaid; financial stability benefits such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits; end of life planning for parents and children; and criminal justice record-clearing remedies. By reducing burdens such as food insecurity, financial insecurity, education challenges, and lack of access to health insurance, CHAMPS and KHD attempt to stabilize families such that medical and educational professionals will no longer feel compelled to report to CPS.
What We’ll Learn: These poverty-focused holistic legal and social programs target marginal cases, again, cases approaching but not on or over the line of a mandated CPS report. Given the national reach of the CPS system, evidence that poverty-focused legal and social services reduce the rate of investigations, especially no-action investigations, would improve the wellbeing of children and families and could revolutionize national CPS reporting policy.
Research Team: We partner with the Carolina Health Advocacy Medicolegal Partnership (“CHAMPS”), housed in the University of South Carolina (“USC”) School of Law, and the Kansas Holistic Defenders, serving Douglas County, Kansas, to field the evaluation. We partner with Dr. Shaniece Criss, Associate Professor of Health Sciences and Director of the Master of Arts in Advocacy and Social Policy at Furman University to conduct the evaluation.
Resources:
Discontinued Projects
Legal Services for Domestic Violence Survivors
The Setting: Victims of domestic violence/sexual assault (DV/SA) experience the highest incidence of ancillary civil legal needs: on average, about eighteen per person in one state [this is crucial because the estimate isn’t nationwide, only from Washington State]. Yet the standard of care for civil legal assistance in the DV/SA context lags behind support for criminal prosecution. Compounding the problem is a severe lack of legal services in high-volume matters such as eviction and small-claims suits. The general expectation, therefore, is that DV/SA survivors will navigate the court system alone.
The Questions: Does supporting DV/SA survivors in accessing available civil legal resources improve social outcomes and/or reduce revictimization? If so, could that model be replicated in other jurisdictions? This high-need, vulnerable population is difficult to study; they also have complex needs that demand the best possible allocation of limited resources. Can service providers employ research tools that indicate what really works?
The Study: The A2J Lab has designed an evaluation to determine the impact of a unique resources referral program that assigns a legal navigator to assess survivors’ needs holistically and match them with appropriate resources. Participants will be randomized to one of two conditions: (1) automatic referral to the program; or (2) referral to other services, including direct referral to legal aid providers without the assistance of the program. The program will use a new survey tool to follow up directly with participants.
What We Hoped to Learn: The study was expected to provide policymakers with concrete data about whether or not the program works and thus whether it is advisable to replicate (and continue to evaluate) the model elsewhere. By using new digital tools to survey DV/SA survivors, the evaluation was also expected to generate valuable data about whether or not online and text-based survey tools are effective ways to communicate with this vulnerable population.
Research Team:
Access to Justice Lab