The mission of Gideon’s Promise, Inc. is to inspire, mobilize, and train legal professionals to provide the highest quality defense representation to people unable to afford an attorney.
In 1963, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that state courts are required under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide counsel in criminal cases to represent defendants who are unable to afford to pay their own attorneys. That same year, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in our nation’s capital. Both occurrences marked a monumental shift towards equality in the justice system and social infrastructure in our country.
Although 1963 was a pivotal year for civil and human rights, jails and prisons are still populated with people who are not receiving quality presentation due to financial, structural, and cultural changes needed in the criminal justice system. Many people in the system are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately minorities. For them, Gideon’s promise remains unfulfilled and justice out of reach.
They are the only organization solely servicing public defenders in under resourced offices. They infuse a value-based approach into their public defender training programs to change the culture of indigent defense through community building and comprehensive, ongoing training and support that creates the best public defenders in the country.