As public defenders, and especially as social workers, we bear witness to how our legal systems too often fail to treat people with basic dignity; instead criminalizing and dehumanizing them before they’ve had a chance to defend their rights or freedom.
Part of our job is reminding prosecutors, juries, judges, and court personnel that the people we are representing are no different from them, and therefore deserve the same level of respect we should afford everyone.
However, just as often, we find ourselves not only advocating for our clients in this way, but for ourselves too. As a Black male social worker in the Bronx courts, I’m forced to defend my own legitimacy before I can defend my clients. My clients should never have to see me fighting for my own humanity before I can fight for theirs.
Yet too often, that is exactly what happens when I walk into court.
How can a place that purports to deliver justice to those in our community without bias do so if it cannot even administer a courtroom without bias towards advocates? If the courts continue to allow this culture to perpetuate, it will not only undermine the legitimacy of public defense but make it harder for people to receive the highest quality legal defense that they are legally entitled to.
Public defenders of color have long faced mistreatment from court officers in the Bronx Criminal Court and Bronx Supreme Court. I’ve experienced it personally, most recently in the Youth Part of Bronx Supreme Court.
One morning, when I walked into court, a sergeant demanded, without a greeting: “Are you an attorney? Are you an attorney?” When I identified myself as the Director of the Adolescent Defense Practice, she pressed further: “I didn’t ask you that! Are you an attorney?” We locked eyes, my face painted with confusion and anxiety. She continued to press, “Are you a social worker?” When I said yes, she told me I could not sit in the front row, “only attorneys” could.
Yet minutes later, I watched a court interpreter, who was neither an attorney nor law enforcement, sit in the same row without issue.
This biased assumption is not an isolated misunderstanding; it reflects a broader and well-documented dynamic in courtrooms where authority, credibility, and belonging are frequently granted through the lens of race. Too often, social workers of color are treated as though we don’t belong in legal spaces.
We’ve tried sitting down with courthouse supervisors and senior court officers at the Office of Court Administration to discuss these issues, and while apologies and vows have been made, nothing has changed. These daily indignities, rooted in race, profession and class, chip away at the integrity of our courts.
They signal to clients, staff of color, and the wider community that even in spaces where justice is supposed to prevail, bias still governs who is seen as legitimate.
When a public defender presents a case for a young person in criminal court, the person being represented sits next to their attorney, absorbing each time the defender is spoken to harshly, cut off, or treated dismissively while advocating. We have seen time and again how witnessing this devaluation can lead the young person to begin questioning their own identity, ambitions, and worth.
This indignity impacts families too. They have sat on courtroom benches and wept, describing how watching the court devalue their loved one and disregard their legal team left them feeling hopeless, as if their son, cousin, or friend were beyond redemption.
These impressions and feelings do not end when the case is over. They linger, shaping how system-involved families see themselves and whether they believe justice is truly possible for them.
It’s time for more than words; it is time for action. First, the courts must adopt and communicate clear, written protocols that apply evenly. The current system, where expectations shift from room to room and “tradition” stands in for policy, creates fertile ground for bias and uneven enforcement.
Social workers, interpreters, advocates and attorneys should all know exactly where they may sit, what tools they may use, and how to identify themselves without fear of discrimination.
Second, court officers must be trained not only in security but in the fundamentals of human service and basic respect. In many cases, they are the face of the courtroom; we and the people we represent encounter them before we even see the judge. A uniform and a badge should never give cover to hostility.
Court leadership must enforce a standard that ensures every person who walks into the courtroom is treated with equal dignity. If we believe in, and aspire to be, a society where people can receive fairness and equal treatment in court, that vision must include how their advocates are treated as well.
Those of us committed to justice should not have to fight for the basic right to belong in the very spaces where we serve.
Orayne Williams is the Director of the Adolescent Defense Project at The Bronx Defenders.
