Our work

How this office is organized.

Cases are assigned to specialized units so that the prosecutor who accepts a case is the prosecutor who tries it.

Adult Diversion

A voluntary pre-trial alternative to criminal prosecution for eligible defendants.

Community Initiatives

See who is doing the work. Partner-led programs, neighborhood activations and prevention efforts happening alongside this office across New Orleans.

The Domestic Violence Unit at the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office features a dedicated screening and prosecution team committed to protecting survivors, reducing intimate partner violence, and holding offenders accountable.

Hate Crimes Unit

The OPDA Hate Crimes Unit is dedicated to investigating and prosecuting criminal acts motivated by bias, prejudice, or hate, ensuring equal protection and safety for all Orleans Parish residents and visitors.

Juvenile Division

The Juvenile Division represents the interests of crime victims and the State of Louisiana in court proceedings involving youth age 17 or younger in Orleans Parish.

N.O.D.I.C.E.

N.O.D.I.C.E. and Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) expand the continuum of crime-prevention tools in Orleans Parish. By identifying vulnerable physical locations and environmental risk factors, N.O.D.I.C.E. guides data-informed resource deployment to improve public safety before crime occurs.

Programs & Initiatives

Advancing public safety, survivor support, youth opportunity, data-informed crime prevention, and systemic accountability throughout New Orleans.

Sexual Assault Kit Initiative

The OPDA SAKI Unit implements a nationwide effort to submit and test previously unsubmitted sexual assault evidence kits. Working in close collaboration with NOPD, the unit reinvestigates cold-case sexual assaults and, where forensic and investigative evidence supports it, pursues criminal prosecution.

Leadership

District Attorney Jason Rogers Williams

The Honorable Jason Rogers Williams was sworn in as District Attorney of Orleans Parish on January 11, 2021.

Born in New Orleans in 1972 to Sidney Williams, a master carpenter, and Janice Rogers, a school teacher, he returned to the city to attend Tulane University, where he walked onto the football team and earned a full scholarship. He began studying law at Tulane Law School immediately upon graduating and took his first cases for indigent criminal defendants through Tulane's Criminal Law Clinic as a third-year student.

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A letter from the District Attorney

What this office is for.

To the people of Orleans Parish,

A prosecutor’s office holds more discretion than almost any other institution in local government. We decide which cases are accepted and which are refused, which are diverted and which are tried. Those decisions are made on your behalf, and you are entitled to see how they are made.

That is why this office publishes its numbers quarterly — acceptances, refusals, diversions, and case ages — whether or not a given quarter reflects well on us. Accountability that only appears in good quarters is not accountability.

It is also why every case is assigned to a specialised unit, and why the prosecutor who accepts a case is the prosecutor who tries it. Victims and witnesses should not have to explain the worst day of their life to a new attorney every time a matter is continued.

We will not get every case right. When we do not, we would rather you hear it from us than find it out some other way.

Jason Rogers Williams

District Attorney, Orleans Parish

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