Orleans Parish District Lawyer Jason Williams (left) at his workplace in New Orleans, Meghan Garvey, the one full-time public protection lawyer in New Orleans who was there within the days simply after Hurricane Katrina and Danny Engelberg, head of the Orleans Public Defenders.
Claire Harbage/NPR
conceal caption
toggle caption
Claire Harbage/NPR
Orleans Parish District Lawyer Jason Williams (left) at his workplace in New Orleans, Meghan Garvey, the one full-time public protection lawyer in New Orleans who was there within the days simply after Hurricane Katrina and Danny Engelberg, head of the Orleans Public Defenders.
Claire Harbage/NPR
In 2006, Ari Shapiro reported on how Hurricane Katrina made an already damaged public defender system in New Orleans worse. The court docket system collapsed within the aftermath of the storm.
Katrina brought about horrific destruction in New Orleans. It threw incarcerated individuals right into a form of purgatory – some had been misplaced in prisons for greater than a yr.
However the storm additionally cleared the best way for modifications that the town’s public defender system had wanted for many years.
Twenty years later, Shapiro returns to New Orleans and finds a system vastly improved.
For sponsor-free episodes of Contemplate This, join Contemplate This+ through Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
E mail us at considerthis@npr.org.
This episode was produced by Alejandra Marquez Janse, with audio engineering by David Greenburg.
It was edited by Sarah Handel and Courtney Dorning.
Our govt producer is Sami Yenigun.