SADO Impact

The State Appellate Defender Office constantly envisions improvements to the services we provide our clients and our community.  Recently, SADO was awarded a grant to temporarily employ a full-time social worker for a Sentencing Advocacy Project to facilitate community placement of our clients.  The goal of the project is to reduce recidivism through the use of evidence-based sentencing practices to achieve community corrections placements and cut costs to the Michigan Department of Corrections. The project builds on the evidence-based successes of SADO’s appellate advocacy in correcting legal errors that occur at sentencing.  SADO continues to utilize grant funds for a First Response Program, designed to identify potentially innocent clients and obtain exculpatory evidence as early as possible, as well as a Crime Lab Unit created in response to the closure of the Detroit Police Department laboratory shut down.