This is the final report on the aims, activities, and achievements of the National Defender Leadership Project (NDLP), which was established by the Vera Institute under grants from the U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Assistance in order to provide technical assistance and consulting services toward the goal of increasing the involvement of public defenders in criminal justice policymaking.
At the time the NDLP was created, no programs existed to help public defenders participate effectively in the interagency initiatives that increasingly shape U.S. criminal justice policy. NDLP training is designed to help public defenders participate more effectively in system wide policy efforts and better clarify the importance of their value in contributing to the quality and effectiveness of the criminal justice system as it serves the public and individual citizens. NDLP also initiated a national dialog among defender managers in order to structure their communication and cooperation with one another in upgrading their participation in criminal justice policymaking. This report's description of the early stages of NDLP's work focuses on the development of a new and novel form of training for public defenders. This occurred in several stages that included getting intelligence from the field, designing an executive seminar, and publicizing NDLP's mission and activities. An overview of the program elements developed by the NDLP focuses on the four executive seminars held, a meeting of the graduates of these executive seminars, interagency leadership exchange, training modules, issue briefs, and the NDLP Web site. The report's concluding section describes how NDLP's work has helped build a network of public defenders who collaborate in increasing their involvement in criminal justice policymaking. The report also poses questions and provides answers about NDLP, and it lists participants in the executive seminars.