SADO Launches "Community Resource" Database

Dozens of Resources Identified in Communites around Michigan

As part of a grant awarded to the State Appellate Defender Office, SADO is pleased to announce a new reentry database on our website identifying resources in communities around the State of Michigan.  Designed for defendants with a real possibility of a community sanction at sentencing or those reentering the community post-sentence, the database will put people in touch with a variety of resources including but not limited to employment, housing, education, drug and alcohol treatment, mental health, and financial planning.  Defense attorneys can use the database to identify appropriate resources for a sentencing plan.  Within the database, the services can be isolated by county and refined by various criteria including those that provide transportation and accepting people on the Sex Offender Registry.  Currently there are over 100 re-entry services identified in the database, which will continue to grow now that it has launched.

The database is part of the grant entitled Answering Gideon’s Call: Improving Indigent Defense Delivery Systems, a Byrne Competitive Grant awarded by the Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance.  SADO Assistant Defender Jacqueline Ouvry was the grant project attorney and will manage the database.  Special thanks to SADO Assistant Defender Marilena David-Martin for coordinating this effort with SADO’s Community Outreach Committee that she chairs, who along with intern Michelle Berlinski, helped populate the database designed by SADO's site administrator Eric Buchanan.