Grants & Collaborative Work

As the leading voice in public defense, NAPD fosters partnerships that expand and strengthen our advocacy beyond the traditional boundaries of public defense. Through collaboration with community organizations, researchers, policy advocates, and beyond, we develop innovative projects that generate valuable data and address the systemic issues impacting public defenders and the communities we serve. 

 

Public Defense Independence Convening (2026)

The NAPD Fund for Justice is taking meaningful action to address one of the most critical threats to equal justice in America — the erosion of independence within public defense systems. Partnering with the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section and its Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense, NAPD launched the Task Force on Public Defense Independence, a collaborative initiative that brings together 22 national, state, and local public defense leaders with firsthand experience navigating threats to defender autonomy. The Task Force’s forthcoming white paper will offer concrete recommendations to safeguard defender independence and strengthen the constitutional right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment — a right that is only as meaningful as the systems empowered to uphold it.

To translate those recommendations into lasting structural reform, NAPD is organizing a convening in August 2026 — supported by the Johnson Foundation — that will unite researchers, practitioners, and policy experts to develop measurable frameworks for evaluating the real-world impact of defender independence. This gathering will build consensus around implementation strategies and deepen the research agenda needed to drive systemic change. By catalyzing cross-sector collaboration, NAPD is positioning public defense reform not as an abstract ideal, but as an achievable and evidence-driven goal.

Census of Public Defender Offices (2024)

Representing the field of public defense as the subject matter experts and assisting in connecting the research team with public defense professionals, NAPD currently serves as part of the BJS-funded CPDO project team alongside researchers from NORC, Urban Institute, and Dr. Andrew Davies. NAPD is represented by KP Friess, who serves as a Co-Principal Investigator on the project, and is joined by Jonathan Lyon. The CPDO aims to collect comprehensive nationwide data on funding, staffing, and caseloads in brick and mortar public defender offices, as an update to the last successful CPDO in 2007. 

The 2024 CPDO is currently ongoing and is slated to conclude at the end of 2026. Read more about CPDO here: 

This Is Defense Video Project

As part of our Gideon @ 60 celebration honoring the 60th anniversary of Gideon v Wainwright in 2023, NAPD partnered with criminal justice reform advocacy organization Zealous to launch This Is Defense – a video archive of working public defenders across role types and jurisdictions on their experiences, challenges, and inspirations in this work. 

Explore the archive or submit a video of your own here: 

Survey of Public Defenders Pilot Project (2016)

Representing the field of public defense as the subject matter experts and assisting in connecting the research team with public defense professionals, NAPD served as part of the BJS-funded SPD Pilot Project team alongside researchers from NORC, Urban Institute, and Dr. Andrew Davies. NAPD was represented by Heather Hall, who served as a Co-Principal Investigator on the project, and joined by NAPD team members Jonathan Lyon and KP Friess. The SPD Pilot Project directly surveyed public defenders on questions relating to their demographics, working conditions, caseloads, interactions with clients, and access to resources. This pilot project was designed as a smaller scale test as a precursor to the full-scale 2025 Survey of Public Defenders. 

Work on this project concluded in 2023. You can read about our findings here: