A Sad Farewell, but Hopeful Future for our East Baton Rouge Advanced Advocacy Project

It was nine years ago, almost to the day, that LCCR expanded its reach to Louisiana’s second-largest city with the hire of a social worker for our brand new pilot program: the Advance Advocacy Project. On October 1st, the project will begin a new chapter as LCCR hands its reins over to Louisiana’s Office of the State Public Defender. The latter intends to utilize the project as a model practice for expanding holistic defense to juvenile defender offices statewide.

For nearly a decade, Advanced Advocacy served as a unique partnership between LCCR and the East Baton Rouge Office of the Public Defender. Through it, LCCR collaborated with OPDBR’s juvenile defense attorney to provide the same level of holistic, trauma-informed care that LCCR had already pioneered in New Orleans. Rather than just addressing the symptom of criminality, Advanced Advocacy addresses the root causes for each child’s arrest. We offer our kids guidance and help them meet their needs at home, school, and in the community. We develop case plans and help kids enroll back in school, secure special education support, access positive after-school programming like job training and mentoring, and connect with mental health care.

“Advanced Advocacy was born from decades of collective work on behalf of incarcerated youth,” says LCCR Executive Director Kristen Rome. “Over our nine-year partnership, we had the privilege and honor of helping nearly 740 youth determine and reclaim their life paths after arrest. We are proud of what we accomplished, but our work is far from done. LCCR will never stop fighting for youth in Baton Rouge and throughout Louisiana to thrive at home, where they belong.”

Almost immediately, Advanced Advocacy became a huge success. At the time it launched, East Baton Rouge Parish had the highest juvenile incarceration rate in the entire state. Since the project’s first full year, EBR’s rate has declined 21% in sharp contract with a 37% statewide increase over the same period (2018-2025). Further evidence that treating the root causes of juvenile delinquency yields stronger results for our kids and community as a whole.

Community leaders began to take notice. In 2018, Baton Rouge Metro Councilmember Erika Green issued the project’s founding social worker, Jennifer Dobies, a certificate of appreciation for her work with kids in the legal system. In 2022, Advanced Advocacy’s unique partnership was honored with the Louisiana State Bar Association’s prestigious Children’s Law Award for its impact on kids in the juvenile legal system.

Our results yielded greater investment, too. In addition to the seed funding and steadfast annual support from our partners at the Huey and Angelina Wilson Foundation, the project secured several multi-year grants from the Dept. of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The latter allowed us to grow from a single social works to its current team of five, positioning us to provide support to 150-200 kids annually.

More so than its accolades and growth, Advanced Advocacy’s legacy can be found in the lives of the 737 children it has served over the past nine years. Its true impact lies in kids like Keenan, who needed a new place to live and to get reenrolled in school. In Deondre, who wanted a better life for himself and his infant son. In Jaylah, who needed stability to care for herself and her family. In so many other young lives over the years–kids who our Advanced Advocacy team helped access the guidance and resources needed to grow up healthy and make their current arrest their last one.

“This work is so important because of how it impacts not just our clients, but also their families,” shared Advanced Advocacy’s Supervising Social Worker, Brianna Doomes. “The services we provide frequently bleeds over to the whole household, through stable housing, healthcare access, education advocacy, and so much more. If not for our advocacy, how many of these kids would have far worse outcomes? Would be expelled from school? Would be incarcerated?”

Beyond individual young lives, Advanced Advocacy’s work is having a huge impact on everyone who lives in the Baton Rouge community. At current measure, 100% of the project’s kids have not been rearrested back into the East Baton Rouge youth justice system within six months of case closure, and 91% have not been rearrested within three years of closure. Fewer kids being rearrested for new offenses means safer streets for us all.

As Louisiana’s Office of the State Public Defender takes over this week, we trust it will further Advanced Advocacy’s legacy by providing the project with all the resources and support it needs to change the lives and life trajectories of hundreds, if not thousands, more kids in the East Baton Rouge legal system. We also wish them success in making a reality our jointly shared vision of a statewide legal system where every arrested child is provided with the holistic, trauma-informed care they need to thrive and leave the system behind for good.

LCCR wishes to thank Advanced Advocacy’s dedicated staff from over the past nine years: Brianna Doomes, Kara Hobbs, Corey Jenkins, Lauren Primeaux, Maria Hundley, Jennifer Dobies, Roberta Lambert, Ashton Hawkins, Carman Thornton, and Jasmine Hastings. We also wish to thank our partners at OPDBR for their commitment to this project, including most notably Lakita Leonard and the rest of the juvenile defense team, Kyla Romanach, and Jack Harrison. If not for the incredible efforts of you all, this project would never have achieved the heights it has reached. Thank you!