ESCDROJ is currently working to establish Groupe de
Recherche, d'Analyse et d'Assistance Légale, the first
law
school affiliated Criminal Justice Clinic to serve the Grand'Anse
region of Haiti. The Clinic will increase access to quality legal
representation for indigent defendants, provide for private mediation
to resolve disputes before they ripen into criminal charges, inform the
citizenry about their rights and responsibilities under the rule of
law, and train and deploy a new class of lawyers dedicated to social
justice. It will also serve as a model that can be replicated in other
law schools of Haiti to increase high quality legal representation for
those charged with crimes who currently are unrepresented, and often
forgotten, in Haiti's criminal justice system.
The Health and Human Rights Prison Project addresses
prolonged pretrial detention and horrific prison conditions by
systematizing the delivery of health and legal services to individual
prisoners and advocating for broader systemic reforms.
The Catholic University of America, through its
CUA-Haiti Initiatives, supports both long- and short-term projects at
ESCDROJ, including the development of a mentor program, a more adequate
legal library, and a model Criminal Justice Clinic to serve the
Jérémie and Rosseaux Communes of Haiti. The Columbus
School of Law, a pioneer in clinical education for over thirty years,
anticipates that ESCDROJ's Criminal Justice Clinic will greatly
increase access to high quality legal representation for the indigent
accused while developing a new class of public interest lawyers
dedicated to bringing about the rule of law in Haiti.
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The Florida International University ("FIU")
College of Law Clinical Program has partnered with ESCDROJ on a number
of curricular, clinical, and social justice projects. Since 2006,
FIU law faculty have worked closely with ESCDROJ faculty and
administration to establish a criminal justice clinic focusing on
detainees at the Jeremie prison. In 2007, FIU hosted ESCDROJ students
in Miami and
Washington, DC, and began a series of collaborations related to ongoing
casework in the area of immigration and human rights. Located in
Miami, with the largest Haitian diaspora in the United States, FIU has
also drawn on its students, faculty, and administrators to provide
expertise to ESCDROJ's library and technology efforts. More
The Hastings to Haiti Partnership (HHP) is an annual
delegation in which law students from the University of California,
Hastings College of the Law visit ESCDROJ.
The purpose fo the annual Delegation is to help strengthen the Rule of
Law in Haiti through the support of legal education. MoreSeton Hall Law
has worked with faculty and students at
ESCDROJ to support its Rule of Law initiative to evaluate and change
current prison conditions in Haiti. The prisons in Haiti are
known to be among the worst in the Western Hemisphere.
Approximately 85% of prisioners have not been convicted of a crime, yet
they languish in atrocious conditions for years awaiting their day in
court. The United States courts have described Haiti's prison
conditions as akin to those that existed on slaveships.
In light of the deplorable conditions in Haiti's prisons, Seton Hall's
Prison's Conditions Project will focus on assessing health care needs
and legal needs of the priosoners at the Jérémie prison
and will complement a larger Health & Human Rights Project (HHRPP)
initiated by Paul Farmer's Partners in Health and the Institute for
Justice and Democracy in Haiti. More