SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office has an unusual unit, a team dedicated to representing people who have cognitive disabilities. It's built on the premise that prison is often not the right place for someone with this type of impairment. NPR criminal justice reporter Meg Anderson has the story.
MEG ANDERSON, BYLINE: A few years ago, Noah Cox started to notice something about many of the people he was representing in court.
NOAH COX: I wanted to know their account of what happened. And I'd ask them questions.
ANDERSON: Cox is a lawyer in the LA County Public Defender's Office.
COX: And many of them would struggle with a basic explanation. And it seemed like they were having challenges related to some sort of intellectual ability.
ANDERSON: What Cox was seeing was indicative of a broader pattern. Studies show people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are overrepresented in the nation's prisons and jails. Those are conditions that limit learning and reasoning, like Down syndrome and fetal alcohol syndrome. Without support, a person with this kind of impairment might have trouble keeping a job, living independently, knowing who's a friend and who isn't. Once they're behind bars, they're in a system that isn't built for them. They might come out worse off. Cox wanted to disrupt that cycle.
COX: Our team is often the first time that somebody is accurately diagnosed. It is sad to me that a lot of my clients at age 30, 40, 50 are being diagnosed for the first time by the criminal legal system.
ANDERSON: It's one of the only public defense teams of its kind in the country, partly, Cox says, because it takes a lot of resources to do this kind of work, which brings us to Jimmy (ph). We're not using his last name because he and his family worried about the stigma of his record.
JIMMY: I'm 56 years old. I was born and raised in East LA.
ANDERSON: Jimmy is wiry, with tattoos on his neck and glasses that are a little too big for his face. For as long as he can remember, he's been getting in trouble with family, with teachers, with the police.
JIMMY: I couldn't control myself. I wasn't aware of my sicknesses. I wasn't aware of anything, really - you know? - that anything was even wrong, you know?
ANDERSON: He has been homeless and struggled with drug abuse, and he's been in and out of prison most of his life for various crimes. Cox remembers the first time Jimmy came to his office on a burglary charge.
COX: He was trying very hard to tell me something that was very important to him. But I could not understand what he was trying to say.
ANDERSON: It was his third strike, meaning he already had two violent felonies on his record. Now he could face a much harsher sentence. After some initial testing by a neuropsychologist...
COX: It became apparent that this was somebody who had a developmental disability who had not been identified when he was young.
ANDERSON: Cox, plus a small team of paralegals, interns and social workers, wanted to make the case that a diversion program - an alternative to prison - would be a better fit for Jimmy, and that would be easier with a diagnosis. So the team gathered as many records as they could and interviewed Jimmy's family to get a sense of his childhood, including his sister Sylvia (ph).
SYLVIA: They were actually trying to help him. And it was very new to us.
ANDERSON: Sylvia always knew something was different about her brother. He was late to crawl, late to speak. He couldn't do his paper route on his own. He struggled in school. She says he started getting in trouble with the police before he even hit his teen years.
SYLVIA: I think it was a self-fulfilling prophecy for him. The more he was labeled bad, I think the more he became bad.
ANDERSON: After all the interviews and tests, Jimmy was diagnosed with a mild intellectual disability.
SYLVIA: We always knew it. So it was very validating.
ANDERSON: That diagnosis made Jimmy eligible for disability services in California. After a lot of discussion with his family, Jimmy chose to seek diversion in his burglary case, and the prosecutor and judge approved. On a sunny day in LA's Ladera Park, Jimmy is going through his workout routine.
JIMMY: I do my pushups right here, like, 50.
ANDERSON: Yeah.
JIMMY: And you feel it burn, you know?
ANDERSON: He comes to this park almost every day with a program that works with adults with disabilities. Lately, his days are looking a lot different than they used to. He lives in a group home, goes to therapy. He's a third of the way through his two-year diversion.
JIMMY: All I can say is that it offers more than prison has to offer me, you know? Because I'm - just changed my life completely. I don't even use drugs anymore. I don't - I'm not homeless anymore. I'm not frustrated anymore. I'm just - I traded in my life for a new one.
ANDERSON: Each time he got out of prison, he felt like he'd take one step forward, then three steps back. Now with a lot of support, he's viewing his life as a clean slate. And Cox says that's the point.
COX: Jimmy himself made a decision that he wanted to invest in his future. This is his opportunity for a real life.
ANDERSON: And hopefully, Cox says, he's the last lawyer Jimmy will ever need.
Meg Anderson, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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