Profile: jon.rapping

Jonathan Rapping is the President and Founder of Gideon’s Promise, an organization that has partnerships with public defender offices across 16 states in a collective effort to transform public defense in those jurisdictions. In 2014, Gideon’s Promise began a partnership with Maryland, where Jon serves as the Director of Strategic Planning and Organizational Development with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. Jon is the Director of the Honors Program in Criminal Justice at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, where he also teaches criminal law and criminal procedure. He is also a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School where he helps to run its prestigious Trial Advocacy Workshop. He is the former Training Director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS), an office nationally known for its training program. Following his tenure at PDS, in 2004 Jon became the first Training Director of Georgia’s new state-wide public defender system. In that capacity he was responsible for designing training programs for both legal and non-legal staff statewide. Jon then became the Director of Training and Recruitment for the Orleans Public Defenders, where he was integral in the efforts to rebuild the public defender system in post-Katrina New Orleans. In recognition of his work in New Orleans, he was a co-recipient of the prestigious Lincoln Leadership Award, given by Kentucky’s Department of Public Advocacy to honor leadership in national efforts to improve indigent defense. Jon has trained public defenders all over the country, and was awarded a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship to develop Gideon’s Promise. In 2009, Jon was named a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow by the Harvard Law School Office of Public Interest in recognition of his contribution to the public interest through his work with the Gideon’s Promise. In 2013 Jon and Gideon’s Promise were awarded the Sentencing Project Award from the National Association of Sentencing Advocates and Mitigation Specialists and the Gideon’s Promise Award from the Southern Center for Human Rights. Also that year he was invited to serve as the Public Interest Scholar in Residence at Touro Law School in recognition of his work with Gideon’s Promise. In 2014, Gideon’s Promise was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award by Emory University. Jon was named a 2014 MacArthur Fellow for his work with Gideon’s Promise.

• Login Count: 7
• Join Date: 77/17/2016 55:00:00
• Last on: 01/20/2017 15:09:51
• Location: Founder & President, Gideon's Promise (Atlanta, GA)
• Articles posted by this author:
• Letter to a Public Interest Lawyer
• What About Those Who Speak For The Voiceless? By Ignoring Public Defenders, the Democratic Party Platform Can't Ensure Equal Justice
• Who Will Heal the Public Defenders?
• You Can't Get Upstream Without Swimming Against the Current
• Can We Be Committed to Both the Client and the Cause? Promoting Racial Justice Through Individual Representation
• The Special Few
• Gideon's Orchestra: It Is Time For the Encore
• To All the Patriots Out There, and Especially Our Public Defenders
• Reviving the Hero Image of the Public Defender by Changing the Story of Our Clients
• Ferguson and Staten Island: In Case Anyone Doubted the Public Needs Defending...
• Need a Lawyer? Sell Everything - Talk Poverty
• Forgive Yourself Without Becoming Complacent; Dream Without Becoming Discouraged
• Continuing the March of the Civil Right Warriors in Selma
• Challenging Judge-Centered Culture
• The Limitation of Policy Fixes: Real Reform Requires That We Change How We Think About Justice
• The Missing Chapter in the Criminal Justice Reform Story
• Public Defenders Key to Reducing Mass Incarceration
• Support Public Defenders - Transform the Culture of Injustice
• The Crucial Element of Criminal Justice Reform That Nobody Is Talking About
• We Ignore Canaries in the Coal Mine of America's Criminal Justice System at Our Peril
• When Events Make Us Feel Helpless, We Must Remember We Are Anything But...