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.
CJI is currently NOT accepting any new clients
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CJI believes everyone should have a choice in who represents them in a criminal case, but in Tennessee, people who can’t afford to hire a lawyer get appointed lawyers chosen by the judge. We confront that injustice by pursuing court-appointments in criminal cases when someone asks us to represent them. We also offer clients free civil legal services for problems connected to their arrest – the only place in Tennessee to do so. And we don’t stop there. The impact of an arrest can last years, and we work to help people address those long-term consequences, including representation at parole hearings, with driver’s license reinstatement processes, and beyond.
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In 2022 the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life sentences for youth are cruel and unusual punishment that violate the 8th amendment. The court directed that all impacted people receive a parole hearing at the appropriate time, which could be as soon as 25 years into their sentence. CJI works with people who are newly eligible for parole under this ruling to support them in pursuing their justice.
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.
This year, we are shining a light on Tennessee’s Court Appointed Counsel system by bringing everyone into the conversation. Whether you have been directly impacted or not, there are ways to join the fight for fair representation.
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Everyone has the right to competent, effective counsel, and you deserve a legal advocate who fights for your rights and best interests. Our Right to Counsel Toolkit is designed to empower you with the knowledge and steps you need to ensure you receive the fair representation you deserve.
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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.
Learn More about Appointed Counsel and Our Upcoming Efforts here.
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We know that more lawyers or even wide legal reforms will not produce a system that earns the title of Justice without a fundamental shift in the way we seek it. Retribution and punishment are hallmarks of cycles of harm, not transformation.
At CJI, we support efforts to reconcile harm outside of the criminal legal system and promote opportunities to create new paths to justice.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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]
