About Us

The Defender Association (TDA) was founded in 1969 to provide criminal defense representation to civil rights activists in Seattle’s historically Black Central District.

As the nation moved into the era of mass incarceration in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, indigent defense was poorly funded, often denied in practice, and dealt with crushing caseloads. TDA fought effectively to bring a different level of service to clients. Alumni include Jeff Robinson, Twyla Carter, Jeff Ellis, James Bible, Anita Khandelwal, and countless others who dedicated their careers to excellent representation of people without the resources to choose their own counsel.

TDA pioneered the concept of getting maximum caseload standards built into the funding model for public defense, making it possible for defenders to do high quality work for a reasonable number of clients.

One of the best tools to drive adequate resources to public defenders is to insist on salary parity with prosecutors. Fighting in King County, TDA was one of the first defender programs in the country to win funding for salary parity.

At the height of mass incarceration in the 1990s, we launched, with small foundation grants, the Racial Disparity Project, dedicated to reducing racial inequity in, and driven by, the criminal system. The RDP first tackled drivers license suspension and car impoundment. Starting in 2000, the RDP focused primarily on drug enforcement and police misconduct.

In the aftermath of the remote detention & selective enforcement litigation, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickles reorganized public defense contracts and nearly eliminated TDA from the practice for several years.

In 2005, to save money, the City of Seattle violated prior promises and began to send pre-trial detainees to the Yakima Jail in Eastern Washington. TDA brought a writ of prohibition, and a Superior Court judge found remote pre-trial detention far from lawyers & family would be unconstitutional. TDA was successful in challenging this remote detention of municipal court pre-trial defendants.

With initial funding from the Ford and Open Society Foundations, the RDP launched the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, the nation’s first pre-booking diversion program for drug offenses, in 2011. It was designed and first implemented here in Seattle-King County.

After years of advocacy spearheaded by former TDA Director Bob Boruchowitz, the Washington Supreme Court adopted comprehensive standards for indigent defense statewide, and required courts to enforce them.

In 2013, when King County brought public defense in-house, the Public Defenders Association (PDA) remained independent to manage alternative public safety programs with roots in community.

PDA’s Director co-chaired the Seattle Community Police Commission, formed to provide community voice during implementation of a Justice Department Consent Decree, from 2013-2017, and a PDA lawyer served on the Commission through 2022.

The Obama Administration, looking for frameworks to transform policing and reduce mass incarceration, hosted a White House symposium on LEAD, featuring the first official discussion ever of “harm reduction” at a White House event.

VOCAL-NY authorized PDA to launch its first affiliate nationally, VOCAL-WA (Voices of Community Activists and Leaders), an organizing effort led by and for those most affected by systemic injustice. VOCAL-WA’s first campaign was the successful effort to get supervised consumption practices to be the official policy of Seattle and King County.

An independent outcomes evaluation of LEAD’s first two years, funded by the Laura & John Arnold Foundation and conducted by the HaRRT Center at the University of Washington, found recidivism reductions, cost savings, jail & prison reductions and reduced felony filings, compared to a control group.

The LEAD Support Bureau was launched in 2016, to provide technical assistance to the scores of communities each year that wanted to visit Seattle or receive help in replicating the model.

Civil Survival is an advocacy home for individuals who are formerly incarcerated and seek to affect public policy and improve conditions for returning community members. Collective Justice advances healing justice practices in community and with individuals currently incarcerated. Both projects were launched by new law graduates who held fellowships at PDA, and PDA supported both to spin off as independent 501c3 organizations after their first several years.

In 2020, recognizing that the criminal legal system was largely shuttered and “the streets were the new jail” during the COVID emergency, PDA and partners secured COVID relief funds to lodge individuals living unsheltered and without lawful income in unused hotels, & mobilized a new intensive case management team to provide care & connection. JustCARE resolved 14 encampments in downtown Seattle neighborhoods, and CoLEAD lodged over 400 individuals in 18 months.

In fall 2021, PDA adopted a Co-Executive Director structure, recognizing the value of multiple voices and perspectives at the top leadership level.

PDA helped design, and provides project management for, a community-based public safety project in the heart of Seattle’s downtown business district, with key partners We Deliver Care, REACH, and Downtown Emergency Service Center.