St Joe County Jail
We’re working with our web development team, several volunteers, and (most important) some forward-looking staff at the St. Joseph County Police Department in South Bend, Indiana to experiment with placing laptops in the St. Joseph County Jail for inmates to complete their Defense Maps. The dual hope is that this opportunity will both (1) serve the cause of fairer handling of criminal cases and (2) enable charged persons to examine their lives, cases, and opportunities for self-improvement during and following their detention. We’re especially grateful to the jail warden Maj. Julie Lawson, Sheriff William Redman, and counsel Troy Warner for their concern for inmates and openness to this idea..
Judge Michael Scopelitis
We’ve teamed with retired Judge Michael Scopelitis to offer the Earning Another Look (EAL) at four prisons in Indiana. Our state has about 30,000 adult inmates serving felony sentences, many of them quite lengthy. Indiana doesn’t have a traditional discretionary parole apparatus, so this chance for inmates to work hard on addressing personal issues and improving their lives and chances on the outside may represent a new incentive for rehabilitation.