Peer Support Inside the Public Defender's Office
A Statewide Model Protected by Attorney-Client Privilege
The Maryland Office of the Public Defender has built a statewide unit of 26 Certified Peer Recovery Specialists. The unit includes an opioid-settlement-funded cohort of six peer staff serving clients with substance use histories across Baltimore City and Washington County. Opioid settlement dollars expanded an existing model that moves clients from jail into vetted treatment and keeps a peer alongside them through the full life of a case.
The Challenge They Were Addressing
The Maryland Office of the Public Defender’s (OPD) peer program began in 2021 in its Parental Defense Division, inspired by public defender offices in the Bronx and Washington state. OPD later expanded peer support to its Adult Criminal and Juvenile Divisions. In the Criminal Division, there was an acute need for substance use recovery support, especially for clients using opioids. Attorneys could advocate for clients’ release from jail to treatment, but only if clients were willing to enter treatment and they had secured a place at a suitable program. People with lived experience of substance use recovery and legal systems, licensed in Maryland as Certified Peer Recovery Specialists, are experts at making those treatment connections and supporting clients through each stage of their case and the recovery process. Clients are often more open to support from someone who has “been there,” than from the other professionals involved in their case.
Since 2024, with an award from Maryland’s Office of Overdose Response, OPD has used opioid settlement funding to continue to expand and improve the defense-based peer support model. Settlement funding has added peer support in the high-need areas of Baltimore City and Washington County (Hagerstown), through four additional full-time peers. It has also supported the promotions of a Peer Lead and Supervisor, allowing for better coordination of statewide referrals and supervision of an expanding team. The Peer Unit has grown to 26 staff across three divisions, and the settlement-funded cohort is a pillar of its substance use recovery work.
What They Built
Referrals originate inside the defense team. An OPD attorney identifies a client for whom recovery support could shape the case, sends a referral to the peer unit, and the statewide peer support manager screens and assigns a peer. Peers then meet clients where they are, often inside a detention center, and complete an intake interview. Clients decide whether they are ready to begin treatment. If they are, the peer finds a treatment program that meets their individual needs. If not, the peer will support them through their case and connect them with overdose prevention services or other resources that align with their personal projected pathway to recovery.
From that first meeting forward, the peer walks through jail, court, and community alongside the client. Peers visit treatment centers in person, which gives them a working map of reputable residential and outpatient providers across Maryland. When a client is ready for placement, the peer matches them to a vetted bed, secures a bed letter, confirming that the treatment program will accept them. In court, typically at a bail review, sentence modification, or disposition, the attorney presents the peer and the placement to the judge. If the judge grants a bail or sentence modification allowing release to treatment, the peer arranges transportation directly from detention to the facility.
After placement, the peer stays with the client through the life of the case. That includes checking in during residential stays, coordinating step-downs, handling relapses without losing the client, and coordinating across divisions when the same client has parallel matters, such as in OPD’s Parental Defense Division. Because peers operate under attorney-client privilege, clients can be honest with them about what is actually happening, and the attorney can file a timely motion instead of waiting for a warrant issue.
Peers also appear in court, speaking to the recovery plan and to their own lived experience. They do not testify as clinical experts, and they do not accept court-mandated participation, since they are members of the defense team. But they explain, for example, levels of care and the practical challenges of recovery, like family and job obligations. They also speak to their own experience with relapse and rearrest, helping to set realistic expectations for progress and being a living example of what success can ultimately look like. Peers have established themselves as a consistent and knowledgeable presence in courtrooms, so that courts have come to rely on their recommendations for diverting people to treatment and continuing their progress.
Key Program Components
Who You Need at the Table
What made a willing partner essential vs. optional?
Required partners are the ones without whom a single case cannot move. OPD agency buy-in at all levels, from attorneys making referrals to leadership making policy decisions, is required for the success of the program. Grant funders have launched and grown OPD peer support. Treatment providers accept the peers’ referrals and provide high-quality clinical care to clients. Detention administrators grant peers access to see clients in custody. Remove any one of these and the program stops.
Helpful partners strengthen the model without being prerequisites for launch. To launch the program successfully, there should be at least one judge who is open to pretrial diversion. Ideally, a judge who understands how recovery actually works, including that relapse is part of the path, will grant detention modifications that a less familiar bench would not. Jail-based peer programs, where they exist, coordinate in-custody services and release transfers. Additional grants alongside the settlement award extend peer coverage into more counties than any single funder could support and have allowed for statewide supervision and coordination.
Budget Breakdown
What is the minimum viable budget to replicate this?
A minimum viable version of this program is a peer supervisor with lived experience plus at least one direct-service peer, housed inside a public defender office. In a single-county setting with a modest caseload, that is roughly two full-time personnel lines plus a small allocation for peer professional development and certification renewal. For a rural county with $75,000 available, one peer at market rate, with benefits, absorbs most of that amount. An external partner may be able to provide structured supervision to support the peer’s state certification; OPD originally partnered with a treatment provider that had Peer Supervisors for this purpose. (In Maryland, peer supervision must be provided by a Registered Peer Supervisor, which is a certification that has additional experience requirements.)
What Worked and Why
Specific decisions or design features that drove success
Placing peers inside the defense team, under attorney-client privilege, is foundational to the program. When a peer is part of the defense team, rather than probation or corrections, for example, a client who has left treatment can call the peer at two in the morning and say, honestly, where they are. That way, the client stays reachable, the peer provides confidential crisis intervention support, and, if necessary, the attorney gets the information needed to file the right motion rather than watch a warrant issue.
Expanding the defense team to include Certified Peer Recovery Specialists who have their own lived experience changes what happens in the first meeting with a client and thereafter. A peer walking into a detention center who has sat in that same seat resets the power dynamic before anyone opens a file. Clients open up faster. Level-of-care decisions are more accurate because the peer is reading the person, not a chart. The client’s various legal matters are coordinated and resolved together when possible, sometimes across counties, courts, and OPD divisions. Judges, over time, recognize the pattern: peer on the team, treatment that is appropriate, client who completes, case that is resolved timely.
Visiting treatment centers in person is another key part of the program design. The peer unit treats the provider list as a living document. Peers show up at facilities, see who is there, and know which centers can actually support clients with wheelchairs, co-occurring conditions, or specific cultural needs. They keep notes on a risk assessment form. They will reevaluate programs if issues arise. This ongoing quality assessment process protects the agency and, more importantly, the client from placements at programs that are not what their websites claim. This vetting requires Certified Peer Recovery Specialists; judges or defense attorneys would not have the expertise or time to do these assessments on their own. The vetting process also helps build relationships between defense team peers and providers, which helps facilitates faster placements and better service coordination.
Bringing in peers at a second bail review rather than the first appearance means built-in time to do the work right. A rushed intake at the first appearance produces a bed letter from a treatment program that may not actually have the services the client needs to succeed, causing them to fail repeatedly and extend their case. A comprehensive intake produces a better treatment plan. The peer needs to interview the client, ask about what has worked for them and what has not, and match the client to a vetted provider. Slower at intake, faster at outcome.
Early outcomes and data
OPD peers have provided recovery support to over 2,500 clients since 2021. The settlement-funded team alone has served over 400 clients.
In five years, the OPD Peer Unit has grown to 26 certified peer recovery specialists across three defense divisions. This growth has depended on meeting grant goals and deliverables, and establishing good working relationships within OPD, with legal system stakeholders, and with treatment providers.
The Peer Unit has received national and state recognition. One of the criminal defense teams was invited to present at a Bureau of Justice Assistance Second Chance summit as a leading model for peer integration in public defense. The Statewide Peer Unit Manager received the Unsung Hero Award from NCADD-Maryland, and received an award from On Our Own of Maryland, both in 2026.
The Peer Unit consults with public defender offices in other states (including Maine and Pennsylvania) on how to build peer units inside defense teams.
Lessons Learned
Hire the supervisor first. Every other decision follows from this one. A peer unit without a peer supervisor drifts into the nearest available management structure, and the model quietly loses its defining features. Bring in the supervisor with standing and lived experience; let the supervisor shape the rest of the hires.
Protect scope at the agency level. Attorneys and judges will, in good faith, push the peer role toward tasks that look helpful but are outside the peer’s credential or the model’s design. Examples include clinical diagnosis, court-mandated participation, and reporting back to probation. Scope has to be protected in writing and in practice, including by leadership.
Plan for funding discontinuity from day one. Almost all of OPD’s peer positions are currently grant-funded, with no permanent state budget lines. Retention strategies, including moving peers between grant-funded projects as cycles end and begin, are part of the job of unit leadership. Treat funding stitching as a core responsibility, not a side task, and be prepared to advocate for longer-term strategies for moving staff into more permanent roles.
Build cross-division coordination on purpose. Clients often have parallel matters across criminal, parental defense, and youth divisions. Coordinating one recovery plan across those matters is a clear win for the client and the Office. Design the peer unit so this coordination is routine, not dependent on any one peer noticing a secondary case. A strong team of supervisors in close communication is helpful for managing various referrals.
Invest in provider vetting as a permanent practice. The treatment landscape changes. Programs open, close, shift ownership, and shift quality. The vetted-provider network should be continually reassessed. Build in time for peers to keep visiting sites, comparing notes, and flagging changes, so the bed letter a peer writes today still reflects what is actually happening on the ground.