Jonathan Rapping, a nationally renowned criminal justice innovator who is the founder and president of Gideon’s Promise, will be the keynote speaker at a community forum on Criminal Justice Reform efforts in Orange County, The event will be held Saturday, Dec. 14, at the Chapel Hill Public Library (100 Library Drive, Chapel Hill) from 1-5 p.m.
Since its inception in 2007, Gideon’s Promise has grown from a single training program for 16 attorneys in two public defender offices in Georgia and Louisiana to a national enterprise with over 1,000 participants in 40 offices across 27 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The organization’s initial three-year program for new public defenders has expanded into the only comprehensive program model that supports public defenders at all levels of their career. The organization now has programming for new lawyers, supervisors, chief defenders, trainers, law students considering a career in public defense, and the clinical instructors who teach them.
The event is sponsored by the District 18 Bar Racial Justice Task Force and the Chapel Hill/Carrboro branch of the NAACP. Sessions will include panels on The Role of Stakeholders in Criminal Justice Reform and The Intersection of Poverty and the Criminal Justice System.
Speakers include District Attorney James Woodall, Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Carl Fox, Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood, Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue and Jasmine McGhee of the N.C. Attorney General's Office.
For more information, contact James E. Williams, Jr., Co-Char of the District 18 Racial Justice Task Force, at 919-819-0364.