Our Cornerstone Projects
The Redemptive
Justice Project
The Redemptive Justice Project – A Multi-Disciplinary Approach (The “TJP”) is a multi-year, multi-faceted, Comunity and Juvenile Justice System-Transforming, Alternative to Detention program designed to address the needs of “at-risk” youth, their communities, and the Juvenile Justice system.
The program modifies disenfranchisement paradigms by re-aligning the life-trajectories of young people, their families and their communities, while simultaneously helping to adjust Juvenile Justice system processes to favor treatment and re-integration best-practices.
This particular program has proven effective in urban, suburban, and rural environments.
The underlying rationale of the entire Juvenile Justice system is that youth are developmentally different from adults and that their behavior is malleable. Rehabilitation and treatment, therefore, in addition to community protections, are considered to be primary, viable and concurrent goals.
Juvenile law attempts to focus on a psychological casework approach, rather than adhering to strict legal processes, taking into account detailed assessments of each young person's history in order to meet his or her specific needs.
Court proceedings may be confidential to protect privacy.
The Fourth Amendment Project
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The Fourth Amendment has its roots in English legal doctrine. Sir Edward Coke, in Semayne's case (1604), famously stated: "The house of [everyone] is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defense against injury and violence as for his
repose." Semayne's Case acknowledged that the King did not have unbridled authority to intrude on his subjects' dwellings but recognized that government
agents were permitted to conduct searches and seizures under certain conditions when their purpose was lawful and a warrant had been obtained.
The Youth Court Initiative
Youth Court is a program in which juvenile offenders are questioned, defended and sentenced by their peers. Currently, there are around 1,200 youth courts in place across the United States with many more being developed. Youth Courts are the fastest growing crime intervention programs in the nation. They offer ways to engage the community in a partnership with the juvenile justice system to respond to juvenile crimes by increasing the awareness of delinquency issues on a local level and by mobilizing community members and youth to take an active role in addressing the problem.
In most youth courts, young offenders are referred for sentencing, rather than for a decision of guilt or innocence. Sentences commonly include community service (1-200 hours), jury duty (up to 12 times), restitution, and apologies. Additional sentencing options include counseling, educational workshops on substance abuse or safe driving, essay writing, victim-awareness classes, curfew, drug testing, school attendance, and peer discussion groups. For the most part, Youth Courts only accept first-time offenders who have committed relatively minor offenses. Rather than handing down harsh juvenile punishment, Youth Courts offer an appropriate level of guidance and correction. Youth Courts share an important goal with law-related education, including a strong potential to improve the citizenship skills of young people.
The Sixth
Amendment Project
During the past decade, the flood of defendants wrongfully convicted has underscored the importance of providing effective defense services for the indigent. While there are many reasons why our justice systems far too often convict innocent persons, clearly one of the best bulwarks against mistakes is having effective, well-trained defense lawyers.
Yet, as Part II of this report demonstrates, defense services in the U.S. are not adequately
funded, leading to all kinds of problems. These include a lack of funds to attract and compensate defense attorneys; pay for experts, investigative and other support services; cover the cost of training counsel; and reduce excessive caseloads.
Too often the lawyers who provide defense services are inexperienced, fail to maintain adequate client contact, and furnish services that are simply not competent, thereby violating ethical duties to their clients under rules of professional conduct.
Meanwhile, judges sometimes fail to honor the independence of counsel and routinely accept legal representation in their courtrooms that is patently inadequate. This report also identifies significant structural problems with indigent defense services since in most jurisdictions there is an absence of oversight to ensure uniform, quality services; sometimes simply a failure to provide counsel; and improper waivers of counsel and guilty pleas accepted without lawyers.
The International Coalition for Drug-Free Communities
To establish and strengthen collaboration among communities, nonprofit agencies, and Federal, State, local and tribal governments to support the efforts of community coalitions to prevent and reduce substance use among youth
To reduce substance use among youth and, over time, reduce substance abuse among adults by addressing the factors in a community that increase the risk of substance abuse and promoting the factors that minimize the risk of substance abuse.
The Economic Consequences of Legal Decision-Making
Law and Economics or Economic Analysis of Law is the application of economic theory
(specifically microeconomic theory) to the analysis of law.
Economic concepts are used to explain the effects of laws, to assess which legal rules are economically efficient, and to predict which legal rules should be promulgated.
In the United States, economic analysis of law has been extremely influential. Judicial opinions utilize economic analysis and the theories of law and economics with some regularity.
The influence of law and economics has also been felt in legal education. Many law schools in North America, Europe, and Asia have faculty members with a graduate degree in economics.
In addition, many professional economists now study and write on the relationship between economics and legal doctrines.
Anthony Kronman, former dean of Yale Law School, has written that "the intellectual movement that has had the greatest influence on American academic law in the past quarter-century [of the 20th Century]" is law and economics.
As used by lawyers and legal scholars, the phrase "law and economics" refers to the application of microeconomic analysis to legal problems.
Because of the overlap between legal systems and political systems, some of the issues in law and economics are also raised in political economy, constitutional economics and political science.
The ComeUnity ReEngineering Project
In addition to award winning achievements in restorative justice, The Advocacy Foundation engages communities through a unique commonsense Community Intelligence and Application (CIA) engagement system.
CIA is comprised of a collective of senior level strategist, managers and proven leaders with collectively more 90 years of notable corporate, legal and community service performance; which have accumulated into a unique skill set, proven successful in – “bridging the improbable into the extraordinary.”
Restorative justice is best applied when circumvented by preventative programs and initiatives that replace blight and hopelessness with achievable high expectations. Education, job creation and affordable housing are primary interventions, proven to redirect underserved/at-risk youth from entering the juvenile justice system – crucial to enhancing the quality socioeconomic growth and development.
Our CIA engagement system is a foundational support that assures The Advocacy Foundation’s internal and external governance, accountability and best business practices, while sustaining our performance as a socioeconomic support provider.
The Eighth Amendment Project
“Excessive bail shall not be required,
nor excessive fines imposed,
nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
The phrase “cruel and unusual punishment” was first used in America in 1776, in Virginia’s
Declaration of Rights.
When the United States Constitution was ratified in 1788, it was recommended by the Virginia convention that the same language should be incorporated into the U.S. document. Patrick Henry and George Mason, among other Virginians, intended that the restriction should also bind Congress, since otherwise, that body could simply inflict cruel punishments rather than them being imposed by the courts.
Their other main line of argument was that, without a provision of this sort, Congress might replace the common law which the U.S. had largely inherited from Britain, and replace it with civil law of the type practiced in countries such as Spain and France. Henry, in particular, was anxious to show that the ancestors Americans should revere would not have allowed torture and barbarity to exist in their lands.
The controversy over the issue was substantial, but the 8th Amendment went before Congress in 1789 and was adopted two years later.
The Landmark
Cases Series
in US Juvenile Justice
The fundamental policy in the operation of a legal system is that Ignorantia Juris Non Excusat (ignorance of the law is no excuse). It would completely undermine the enforcement of any law if the person potentially at fault was able to raise as a successful defense that he or she had not been aware of the particular law.
For this reason, all the main legislatures publish their laws freely whether in hard copy or on the Internet, while others offer them for sale to the public at affordable prices.
Because everyone is entitled to access the laws as they affect their personal lives, all adults are assumed responsible enough to research the law before they act. If they fail to do so, they can hardly complain if their acts prove unlawful, no matter how transiently they may be within the jurisdiction.
The only exception to this rule excuses those of reduced capacity, whether as infants or through mental illness (for example, see the principle of doli incapax which raises an irrebuttable presumption in Criminal Law that an infant is incapable of committing a crime).
Underpinning most social, moral and religious systems is the policy of sanctity of life (also culture of life).