Legitimacy & Resilience for Prosecutors

Legitimacy & Resilience

Our hypothesis is simple and yet ambitious: with intentional support, justice system professionals can more clearly articulate and deliver on a robust notion of justice, one that factors in trauma experienced by themselves and the people they serve.

Legitimacy & Resilience for judicial officers:

We are currently testing this approach with a cohort of judicial officers in a major county court system. Judicial officers commit to individual observation and coaching for a 12-week period on the topics of procedural justice and trauma responsivity. Email us to learn about bringing these strategies to your court system.

Legitimacy & Resilience for Prosecutors:

In 2025, our multidisciplinary team had the privilege of working with 30 prosecutors and victim-witness professionals from four prosecutor offices on the frameworks of procedural justice and trauma-responsivity.

PROJECT ACTIVITIES:

  1. Work with prosecution professionals to build knowledge and skills aligned with procedural justice and trauma-responsivity

  2. Share lessons with the national field

PILOT OFFICES:

In the project’s first year, we worked with professionals from four prosecutor offices:

  • Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (IL)

  • La Crosse County District Attorney’s Office (WI)

  • Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office (WI)

  • St. Paul City Attorney’s Office (MN)

We are grateful to the Joyce Foundation for their support of this work with prosecutor offices.

Download our Year 1 Insights and Impacts report.