Our Work
Defending New Yorkers
We defend nearly 20,000 Bronx residents each year across criminal, civil, family, and immigration cases—and reach thousands more through holistic advocacy, social work, and community-based services.
Civil Action
Protecting people’s belongings, homes, jobs, and opportunities
A sweeping array of civil punishments are triggered the moment someone faces arrest, deportation, or family separation. The people we represent risk losing their jobs, homes, income, property, and basic civil rights – struggles that can be more devastating and long-lasting than the charges themselves.
Criminal Defense
Defending people before arrest
and after arrest
The Bronx is one of the most aggressively policed boroughs in New York City. As a result, we represent thousands of people each year, nearly 40% of whom are charged with low-level offenses such as shoplifting, traffic offenses, and drug possession. As part of our holistic approach, we spend time getting to know the people we represent and gaining a deeper understanding of their lives and needs.
Immigration Defense
Fighting detention and deportation
Nearly a third of the residents of the Bronx were born outside the United States, and many face the unprecedented threat of detention and deportation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Our attorneys help people facing criminal, family, and civil proceedings make informed and strategic decisions to protect their rights. We are also one of the three public defender organizations leading the nation’s first-ever universal representation program for detained immigrants facing deportation.
Family Defense
Keeping families together
As residents of the most heavily disinvested borough in the city, families in the Bronx experience the highest rates of family policing and parent-child separation. We serve as the primary institutional provider defending parents and caretakers against the painful and unnecessary removals of their children in the Bronx.
Social Work
Defending people’s dignity, health, and well-being
Effectively fighting for people facing legal charges requires knowing and understanding their goals and needs beyond those related to a single case or legal matter.
Our Social Work Practice provides an understanding of people’s lives and the challenges that are connected to their involvement in the various legal systems.
The expertise of our Masters-level social workers and non-legal advocates helps people secure positive case outcomes and address the issues that drove them into the legal system in the first place.
Special Practices
Through our holistic model, we are constantly specializing our defense work to better defend against the nuanced punishments of legal system entanglement.
Adolescent Defense
Young people in the South Bronx grow up in one of the most under-resourced and over-policed communities in the nation.
These complex conditions can trap youth in cycles of poverty, as well as criminal and juvenile legal involvement.
The dedicated team of defense attorneys, social workers, education attorneys, and advocates working on the Adolescent Defense Project provides specialized representation to young people who are being prosecuted as adults.
Early Defense
While traditional public defense comes into play once a case has already been filed, The Bronx Defenders’ Early Defense team is an innovative program that helps identify and address legal issues before they become legal cases.
We advocate for people during investigations by the family policing system (otherwise known as the Administration for Children’s Services), the NYPD, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; connect people in danger of eviction with benefits and housing support; and work with immigrants to file affirmative applications to secure their status in this country.
Through our 24-hour hotline and community intake system, we have built a proactive advocacy program that prevents legal system entanglement for those at risk.
Forensic Group
Forensic evidence can make or break a case—but too often, it’s flawed, unvalidated, or misused in court. The Bronx Defenders’ Forensic Practice Group equips our attorneys with the expertise to challenge unreliable forensic evidence and prevent wrongful convictions.
Specializing in DNA, fingerprints, witness identification, false confessions, ballistics, and digital evidence, we provide training, resources, and cutting-edge legal strategies to ensure our clients receive a truly rigorous defense.
Healthy Parents / Healthy Babies
Every newborn deserves the chance to bond with their parents—but too often, infants are taken from hospitals and placed in foster care simply because their parents have past legal system involvement.
Healthy Parents, Healthy Babies (HPHB) works to prevent these unnecessary separations by providing pregnant people with social workers, advocates, and essential resources to create a safe and stable home.
Through counseling, legal advocacy, and connections to vital services like prenatal care, mental health support, and family-strengthening programs, HPHB helps parents and caregivers build a secure future for their children—keeping families together from the very start.
For more information or to make a donation of supplies to our expecting parents and their babies, please contact hphb@bronxdefenders.org or call 718-838-7817.
LGBTQ Defense
The LGBTQ Defense Project is an innovative, client-centered program providing holistic representation and advocacy tailored to the needs of LGBTQ+ community members.
The LGBTQ Defense Project provides queer and trans residents of the Bronx with representation by specialized attorneys, social workers, and advocates who honor their clients as people, understand the ways legal systems pose threats beyond those faced by straight and cisgender people, and provide defense that responds to and mitigates those harms inside courtrooms, jails, prisons, and legislative chambers.
Questions? Email us at LGBTQDefense@BronxDefenders.org
LGBTQ+ Defense Project Resources
Education Defense
Every student deserves access to a quality education, yet too many face barriers—from wrongful suspensions to inadequate special education services—that push them out of school and into the legal system.
The Education Defense Project (EDP) fights to protect students’ rights, advocating for youth in special education, school discipline cases, and even while incarcerated. We also support parents in navigating the education system to ensure their children receive the services they need.
Through individual representation and systemic advocacy, EDP works to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline and create real educational opportunities for the people and families we represent.
Prisoners’ Rights
In New York City, the majority of people in jail are there pretrial—legally innocent, but detained simply because they cannot afford bail. These individuals face violence, medical neglect, and lasting harm while incarcerated.
The Prisoners’ Rights Project brings together attorneys, advocates, and social workers to defend our clients from abuse behind bars, ensure access to care, and protect their dignity.
As part of our holistic defense model, we stand with our clients not only in court but through every stage of their fight for justice—including while they are inside.