The Knox County Public Defender’s Office has gained a national reputation for its unique approach to representing those who run afoul of the law, and Mark Stephens loves telling the story of how it all started. It took a rather inauspicious purse snatching for Stephens, who has served as Knox County’s public defender since 1990, to fully realize that there’s more to law and order than just the legal system. And that realization has led to the institution of a more holistic approach to the law, one that has served as a model for other public defender offices around the country looking to break the cycle of crime and keep people from landing back behind bars.

“I represented a young man who on the first Wednesday of every month, he would go to a grocery store parking lot out in East Knoxville and he would wait. If an old lady pulled up in the parking lot and she went into the store but she came out without groceries, that meant she must have cashed a check, so he’d knock her down, take her purse, and off he’d go,” Stephens recounts. And on this day in 1998, the guy was arrested. A couple of good Samaritans chased him into a nearby alley and held him until police arrived. The woman said the robber, who Stephens didn’t name due to privacy concerns, pulled out a knife and threatened her as she clutched tight to her purse strings, but no knife was ever recovered.

“He was the one who took her purse, there was no question, but if the jury believes he had a knife then that’s aggravated robbery, instead of simple robbery, which carries 8 to 12 years (in prison). So whether or not he had a knife made a huge difference in this case,” Stephens says. Following trial, a jury convicted the man of simple robbery, a win for Stephens as defense attorney, and the judge later sentenced him to probation instead of jail time. It may have been another win, but Stephens says it wasn’t until afterward that he realized he hadn’t really help solve the bigger issues at hand.

“I remember it just like it was yesterday, except I remember when he hit that courtroom door I thought, ‘Oh man, I’ve won the battle but I’ve lost the war,’ because I know—or at least have a strong idea of—where he’s going to be next month. I was so embarrassed at myself because up until that point it never dawned on me that I should ask … is there something that I can do for him to address those underlying dynamics driving his criminal behavior? So now we’re looking at the whole person, not just the criminal charge.”

That case sparked Stephens’ eventual transformation of the public defender’s office, developing methods to help keep would-be criminals from committing crimes in the future. No longer are defense attorneys just charged with legal representation—they now look at the bigger picture for each person and each court case they oversee. It’s a relatively new approach to criminal justice known as “holistic defense,” a tactic the Knox County Public Defender’s Community Law Office helped pioneer when in 2003 it started teaming attorneys with social workers to evaluate select individuals being represented by the office, identify issues contributing to his or her criminal behavior, and come up with a plan to address those challenges. It has served as an example for many other offices looking to improve outcomes for those tangled in the law, and while holistic defense is still only practiced by a small percentage of public defenders across the county, in recent years the federal Department of Justice has offered its backing and some money to spread the model nationally. Knoxville is ahead of the curve.

“Traditionally, public defenders are charged with representing indigent clients accused of a criminal offense, but there are usually other issues involved like mental illness, substance abuse, unemployment, or homelessness. All of those factors contribute to a person’s difficulties and involvement with the criminal justice system,” says Dr. Roger Nooe, director of social services for the Community Law Office. “If you can address some of the problems not only can you represent them on the charges, but it also affords a great opportunity to break that cycle and help people reintegrate into the community again. It’s not about just adding social workers, but beginning to integrate social services into public representation, bringing in social services in an effort to reduce recidivism.”

There are some challenges to this approach. The sheer volume of cases handled by the Knox County Public Defender’s Office, coupled with budget constraints, is a big one. Another is the time it can take to work with some folks dealing with the toughest issues. All of those factors limit the scope of work and, to some extent, the overall effectiveness of the program. The office’s 23 lawyers handle about 12,000 cases annually, of which more than 1,500 are referred to a team of eight social workers for evaluations and services, according to the department’s own figures. During some weeks, social workers see as many as 45 new referrals, a staggering amount, Nooe says. But most of the people walking through the doors are low-level misdemeanor offenders—about 80 percent of all the cases handled by the office—and if key factors can be rooted out that contributed to their minor brush with the law, they’re much less likely to end up back in the clink. The department’s operating budget last fiscal year was nearly $1.9 million (a mix of local, state, federal, and grant money), of which nearly a quarter goes toward social-service work.

“Our lawyers usually refer clients over to the social workers, and we always say ‘do whatever it takes,’” Stephens says. “I don’t care how long the criminal case lasts, if we need to work with this guy for two years then work with him for two years, if it’s 10 years, work with him for 10 years, and if it’s 10 days then it’s 10 days. Whatever it takes to engage that person, assess what those social dynamics are, and come up with a plan to try and address those dynamics—and there’s not a whole lot of offices that do that.”

The local program has attracted top law students from universities across the country for its summer intern program (the office actually calls these interns “externs,” but they are interns by any other name). A rising senior at Harvard Law School, Lisa Fitzgerald relocated to Knoxville this summer to intern and learn more about this method that’s starting to reshape criminal defense. She described Knox County’s work as a “glimmer of hope” in what is otherwise a mostly bleak and dysfunctional legal system, but still more needs to be done, she says.

“What they have going is great, but it can’t really meet the goal of this model that they’re working toward—I think they just need more resources,” Fitzgerald says. “The other frustrating part is that a lot of the work the social workers do could be much more efficient if the system was set up for this model. For example, the jail has a six-week waiting list right now [for inmates who need] to see a mental health professional, so no matter how wonderful the representation here is, we can’t do anything except get them on a list for six weeks.”

According to Stephens, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that the approach is paying off in some big ways, but measured outcomes to support those assumptions are still lacking. The office has done some internal calculations, but declined to release that data until it could be compared with an independent evaluation expected to be completed next year.

“We’re showing some pretty promising results. Our first internal evaluation shows a recidivism rate of about 31 percent, compared with a state average of 65 to 70 percent,” Stephens says. Other indicators showed that clients who worked with social workers in the office were arrested less than half as often as a group of peers that just received legal representation, and they also spent less time in jail, he says.

Stephens and the Community Law Office have played a key role in developing and refining this new take on criminal defense. He worked with other legal experts to flesh out the idea during a series of executive sessions at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in the late 1990s, where he worked with others tinkering with similar ideas. One key to the approach is adapting the holistic defense model to fit the needs of the community, and those vary depending on a number of factors, says Robin Steinberg, an attorney who worked with Stephens at Harvard and serves as executive director of the Bronx Defenders, a New York non-profit public defender’s office backing the model.

“If you’re not looking at the whole picture then you’re likely to focus on one part of a client’s life instead of the broader picture, and you can actually do more harm than good,” Steinberg says. “Public defender offices across the country are really beginning to look more broadly at their role in the system, asking how we can better serve clients and how we can produce better results, and not just for clients, but for communities. This really isn’t about what side of the fence you are on politically, it’s about thinking of justice in a smart way.”

Clay Duda

Former Mercury staff reporter Clay Duda has covered gangs in New York, housing busts in Atlanta, and wildfires in Northern California. And lots of stuff about Knoxville.