Month: December 2024

Source: United States Department of Justice

Thank you, Attorney General Garland and White House Counsel Siskel, for convening us today. And thank you to all of the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable members for working to realize the mission of this body.

I also want to recognize and give thanks to Rachel Rossi, Director of the Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice; to Allie Yang-Green, LAIR’s Executive Director; to Kristen Clarke, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division; and to all the staff of the Office for Access to Justice (ATJ) who work behind the scenes helping to operationalize LAIR’s work. Their collective work and collaboration with LAIR partners and other stakeholders have been remarkable.

In the United States, access to justice remains out of reach for far too many people. Legal help for essential needs like housing, education, employment, and safety from violence are often elusive. Thanks to the collaboration of the 28 federal agencies that make up LAIR, our nation is actively addressing this challenge by strengthening federal programs to address basic human needs.

From its origin in 2012 through today, LAIR’s mission has remained critical for us all. Through interagency collaboration and stakeholder engagement, the 28 individual LAIR partner agencies — each with diverse missions, mandates, expertise, and tools — develop policy recommendations, advance evidence-based research, collect and analyze data, and promulgate best practices.

Over the past few years, LAIR’s work has promoted innovative efforts to expand access to legal assistance, from both lawyers and nonlawyers. Those efforts include promoting people-centered strategies for simplifying and reducing burdens to accessing federal administrative processes and government services; and creating tools, like the Federal Funding Opportunities online hub, that are working to ensure funding can better reach legal service providers to close justice gaps.

This year, LAIR took on the critical issue of data collection and research as a means for advancing equal access to justice. Every day, millions of Americans face legal problems. Using data to understand and illuminate the barriers Americans face in accessing justice is essential. This year’s report details member agencies’ use of data and research in developing, implementing, evaluating, and improving federal policies and programs that serve the public and help them resolve their justice problems.

LAIR’s work has also revealed the power of collaboration and the urgent need for this body to continue to advance our collective work to close the justice gap. Together, LAIR’s partner agencies can advance innovative strategies with comprehensive approaches that utilize their diverse and expansive expertise.

I’ve seen firsthand how LAIR’s work is valued and even replicated throughout the world. This past summer, I delivered remarks at the United Nations’ 2024 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, where I reaffirmed our country’s commitment to implementing U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 16 — to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels. I also represented the United States at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Access to Justice Roundtable held in Canada in October. In both forums, I recognized the leadership role of the United States in advancing access to justice, as well as how much we can learn from other governments and partners. I also highlighted the work of LAIR.  And it became clear to me — through meetings, conversations, and bilateral dialogues — how much stakeholders around the world look to what is happening here in the United States to set an example. I am proud that ATJ will continue to use Sustainable Development Goal 16 as an important tool to close the justice gap in the United States.

Today, as we highlight LAIR’s body of work in 2024, and celebrate the innovation this interagency partnership has advanced since its origins in 2012, we also join in renewed commitment to this work going forward. Your participation in LAIR’s work and your presence at this convening stands as a reaffirmation of this commitment to work collaboratively to mobilize resources and develop access to justice solutions.  

Thank you again to all of you. Your work on these issues is so vital and so energizing. With that, I’ll turn things over to Director Rossi. Thank you.

Source: United States Department of Justice

Remarks as Delivered

Thank you, Rachel. I am so grateful for your leadership.

And I am grateful to all the extraordinary public servants of the Department’s Office for Access to Justice for everything that they’ve done as part of LAIR and of really building an office basically from nothing into an enormous institution of incredible vigor and effectiveness in providing access to justice.

For the nearly four years that I have had the honor of serving as Attorney General, I start every single morning by walking through a rotunda, which is right outside my office, in which these words are inscribed: “The United States wins its point whenever justice is done its citizens in [the] courts.”

This message reflects that the Department is responsible not only for enforcing the law, and not only for defending the federal government and its interests, but also for upholding the Rule of Law.

I speak often about the importance of building and maintaining public trust for what we do — and in the Rule of Law itself.

Public faith in the rule of law depends in no small part on faith that our system will ensure equal justice under law.

And fulfilling the promise of equal justice demands that we work to ensure equal access to justice. For without equal access to justice, the promise of equal justice just rings hollow.

The White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (LAIR) seeks to fulfill that promise.

Together, we — the Roundtable’s 28 federal agencies — are charged with “increase[ing] the availability of meaningful access to justice for individuals and families, regardless of wealth or status.”

Since its formation in 2012, the Roundtable has brought its resources and expertise to bear on a range of essential topics related to that critical mission.

I’ll give just a few highlights of what we have done over the last few years:

In 2021, the Roundtable’s work examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on access to justice in both the civil and criminal justice systems.

In 2022, we focused on reducing justice gaps by simplifying federal government forms, processes, and language, and emphasizing the importance of getting feedback from the communities we serve.

This work was based on a simple idea: you should not need legal training to access government programs — nor to understand what the government is asking of you.

Last year, we focused on applying those simplification tools to expand access to justice within federal administrative proceedings.

And this year, as Ed and the Second Gentleman said, we turned our focus to a cross-cutting topic that underlies and enables many of these important efforts: the role of data and research in expanding access to justice.

This year’s report explores how agencies can use data and research in developing, implementing, evaluating, and improving federal programs that serve the public.

And it studies the way in which data and research can help us to enable the public to understand and navigate and resolve their justice problems.

This year’s report also highlights the ways that the 28 members of the Roundtable have harnessed data to expand access to justice, including by:

• Gathering data to inform efforts to improve access to federal programs;
• Evaluating those efforts over time; and
• Sharing data to help outside researchers, legal aid organizations, and the general public derive further insight into access to justice issues and solutions.

We will hear more about some of these efforts today, and we are grateful to those in this room who have championed them.

I want to provide just a few updates on what the Justice Department has been doing:

The Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics — which is the federal government’s criminal justice statistics bureau — has collaborated with our Access to Justice Office, to develop the Access to Justice Design and Testing Program.

This new program is aimed at identifying and filling gaps in our data about access to justice for civil legal needs. We are developing and piloting a household-based civil legal needs survey. And we are evaluating additional data collection related to access to justice for civil legal needs.

The Justice Department has also partnered with the U.S. Census Bureau to link individual-level data from a variety of programs with federal and state datasets in order to give us critical insights into how federal programs are working.

We are also committed to ensuring that the public has access to critical data. This includes, for the first time, releasing national-level data regarding deaths of individuals in state and local custody through the Bureau of Justice Assistance. This data is critical to informing the efforts of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials to prevent deaths in custody.

It also includes data ranging from nationwide crime and victimization rates, to maps of treatment courts that enable judicially supervised treatment and alternatives to incarceration.

We will soon hear from several representatives of members’ agencies and offices about some of the key initiatives that their agencies have undertaken to make equal access to justice a reality. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from you.

But first, again, I want to thank all of you for recognizing the importance of this work and for carrying it through to the work that you do on behalf of the American people every day.

I know I speak for all of us in recognizing that this work could not happen without the dedication, expertise, and passion of the Roundtable’s staff and the Office for Access to Justice under the leadership of Rachel Rossi.

I am particularly grateful to the Roundtable’s Executive Director Allie Yang-Green. Thank you for the work you have done and that you will do to carry this progress forward.

I also want to acknowledge Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Ben Mizer — that’s a big mouthful but really he’s the Acting Associate Attorney General — and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke. Thank you for being here today and for your partnership and support for all of this work.

Serving as a co-chair of the Roundtable has been an enormous honor.

And I am grateful to have been able to serve alongside White House Counsel Ed Siskel, and under Stuart Delery and Dana Remus before him. You and your staff have been excellent partners, and I am grateful. I want to thank the Second Gentleman for your commitment to this. That kind of commitment is what shows everyone in the government that you really care about this.

Ensuring equal access to justice is an ambitious task that requires a true government-wide effort. But it could not be more important. Thank you all.

Source: United States Department of Justice

The Justice Department announced today the findings from its pattern or practice investigation into conduct by the City of Worcester, Massachusetts, and the Worcester Police Department (WPD).

According to the findings, the City of Worcester and WPD engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of rights secured by the U.S. Constitution and federal law.

Specifically, as detailed in the investigative report, the Justice Department finds that:

• WPD uses excessive force, including unjustified uses of tasers, police dogs and strikes to the head. Officers rapidly escalated minor incidents by using more force than necessary, including during encounters with people who have behavioral health disabilities or are in crisis. WPD’s use of excessive force violates the Fourth Amendment.
• WPD has allowed certain officers at times to engage in outrageous government conduct and violate the constitutional rights of women suspected of being involved in the commercial sex trade by engaging in sexual contact while undercover as part of official investigations. This violates the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

The department’s investigation also describes serious concerns about some credible reports that officers have sexually assaulted women under threat of arrest and engaged in other sexual misconduct; and concerns that WPD lacks adequate policies and practices to respond to and investigate sexual assaults by officers and others. Finally, the department raised concerns that WPD engages in racially discriminatory policing.  

Deficiencies in policies, training, supervision, and accountability contribute to the city and WPD’s unlawful conduct.

“Our comprehensive investigation revealed that the Worcester Police Department uses excessive force and has allowed undercover police officers to engage in sexual contact with women suspected of being involved in the commercial sex trade,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This is the first time the department has issued a pattern or practice finding involving sexual misconduct by officers. We look forward to working with city officials to institute reforms that build on their own preliminary efforts but that will fully bring an end to these unlawful and unconstitutional practices. The Justice Department is committed to standing firm against sexual misconduct in all its forms.”

“Excessive force and sexual misconduct at the hands of officers who took an oath to serve and protect deeply diminishes the public’s trust in its sworn officers” said U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy for the District of Massachusetts. “The actions by certain officers who engaged in this conduct are not a reflection of the many hard working and ethical officers at the WPD who did not engage in such misconduct or the thousands of police officers around the Commonwealth who serve with honor every day. While the findings announced in today’s report are serious and sobering, today we start a new chapter. We look forward to working with the City of Worcester and the new leadership of the Worcester Police Department to implement reforms that will prevent these kinds of incidents from reoccurring.”

The Justice Department opened this investigation on Nov. 15, 2022, pursuant to 34 U.S.C. § 12601 (Section 12601), which prohibits law enforcement officers from engaging in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of rights protected by the Constitution or federal law. The investigation was conducted by career attorneys and staff in the Civil Rights Division’s Special Litigation Section and the Civil Rights Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.

The report acknowledges the changes already made by the City and WPD and identifies additional remedial measures that the department believes are necessary to address its findings. The department is committed to working collaboratively with the City and WPD to address and remedy the harms the investigation identified.

The department will also be seeking input from the Worcester community on remedies to address the investigation’s findings. Members of the public may submit recommendations by email at community.wpd@usdoj.gov or by phone at 617-275-8756.

The Justice Department will hold a webinar at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 9, to provide more information about the findings. Members of the public are encouraged to attend. Please email community.wpd@usdoj.gov to register.

Information about the Civil Rights Division is available at www.justice.gov/crt. Information about the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts is available at www.justice.gov/usao-ma.