OUR LEGAL SERVICES

DIRECT REPRESENTATION

CJI offers comprehensive legal representation for people charged with criminal offenses who cannot afford to hire a lawyer. We also represent people dealing with long term consequences of involvement in the criminal legal system. We operate primarily in Nashville, but are active in the wider TN area.

SYSTEMIC REFORM

The way things have always been done isn’t always the best way - or even a good way – to do them, except to the people in charge. The criminal legal system is full of punitive policies and practices that perpetuate injustice on poor and marginalized people. CJI works to disrupt and mitigate the harm these policies cause, and to implement equitable alternatives that produce justice for everyone. 

  • Judges, legislators, and other government officials have the power to change “business as usual” practices that routinely harm people involved in the legal system. When they know better, they can choose to do better. CJI works to educate policymakers about injustices in the criminal legal system and the changes they can make to produce more fairness and equity into it. One of our biggest projects to date has been a campaign to reduce and eliminate the imposition of court fines and fees on people who cannot afford to pay them.

  • Creating a world in which everyone experiences justice requires new approaches to serious problems with how our legal system works – or doesn’t work – for poor and marginalized people. Witnessing what happens to people caught up in that system allows us to see what’s going wrong and why, and to join with those most impacted to identify how we can do justice better. CJI seeks to implement new approaches to longstanding problems in our criminal legal system, like Tennessee’s inadequate court-appointed counsel program. In 2024, we are launching a pilot project to improve the quality of those services in Nashville. You can learn more about that initiative here.

  • Sometimes lawsuits are the only way to right a wrong. Courtrooms today operate like conveyor belts, where people are judged too often by how they look or how much money they have, instead of who they are. Civil rights litigation is one way to hold the system accountable when it fails to protect and uphold everyone’s right to justice and fair treatment. Examples of our work include successfully representing the Nashville Community Bail Fund in its effort to end unfair cash bail garnishment in Nashville and advocating for public access to the courts and protections for incarcerated people at the start of the COVID pandemic. [See more in our NEWS]

COMMUNITY-BASED JUSTICE
and EDUCATION

CJI confronts the systemic problems in our criminal legal system by amplifying the real-life stories of the people who experience it, and educating Tennesseans who have little or no interaction with it about the routine injustices that happen there.

Our goal is to develop a community-driven justice platform that identifies and promotes the changes necessary to make justice a real-life experience for everyone.

  • Restorative Justice focuses on addressing interpersonal violence and harm in our community by replacing the adversarial court process with a relationship-based accountability and repair process. We support existing restorative justice programs, including the Youth Justice Diversion Program led by Raphah Institute, and expanding access to these alternatives as much as possible.

  • Tennessee has one of the worst appointed counsel systems in the country today. For decades, thousands of people have routinely suffered life-altering injustices because their appointed lawyers were too inexperienced, overworked, and/or indifferent to provide them effective representation. CJI will work to amplify stories and educate Tennesseans to foster a community-driven justice platform that identifies and promotes the changes necessary to produce equal justice for everyone in our courts.