Before the big reforms, there’s a baseline Orleans Parish Criminal District Court hasn’t reliably met: a courtroom that opens on time, every day, with rulings grounded in the rule of law — not in opinion, not in mood, not in the calendar.

Andre Gaudin, Jr. knows what that standard demands. He’s been held to it for over 15 years as a New Orleans prosecutor — trying high-profile murder cases with the Major Offense Trials Unit, leading the Narcotics Unit, the Economic Crimes Unit, and the Hi-Tech Crimes Unit, and earning the 2016 National HIDTA Prosecutor of the Year award. He currently serves as Chief of the Screening Division at the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office, where his team makes the first charging call on every felony arrest in the parish — tens of thousands of cases annually, each one a judgment about justice, public safety, and the rule of law.

That record reflects 15 years of dedicated public service to the people of New Orleans — and it is the foundation he will bring to Section J on day one.

Three Things That Will Change the Status Quo at Tulane and Broad

01 — Data Transparency

A Public Accountability Dashboard

Orleans Parish Criminal District Court handles roughly 25% of all criminal jury trials in the state of Louisiana. That’s an enormous share of the public trust — and right now, the public has no reliable way to measure whether that trust is being honored.

Legislators in Baton Rouge are currently debating whether to cut judgeships at Tulane and Broad — and that debate has been fought over contested, incomplete caseload data. Orleans Parish never built the infrastructure to settle the dispute with facts. Andre Gaudin, Jr. has spent his career building exactly that kind of infrastructure.

At the DA’s Office, he wrote the grant that created OPDA’s first modern case management system — giving prosecutors, for the first time, the data tools to track cases, identify patterns, and measure outcomes. He created NODICE, New Orleans’ first data-driven initiative to coordinate city resources and deliver them to neighborhoods most in need — a program that helped reduce violent crime by 67% in target areas.

Section J under Andre Gaudin, Jr. will be the first courtroom in the courthouse to publish its data — case processing times, sentencing outcomes by crime type, recidivism rates, and racial disparities — available for every New Orleans resident to see.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. The public deserves to know whether this courthouse is actually delivering justice — and I intend to show them.”

— Andre Gaudin, Jr.

Right now, that data doesn’t exist in any public-facing form. It will.

02 — Behavioral Health

A Dedicated Behavioral Health Court in Section J

The majority of defendants who receive a plea agreement walk out of court on probation. Without addressing the underlying conditions driving their behavior — untreated mental illness, addiction, trauma — a significant number of them will be back. That’s not just a justice failure. It’s a waste of public resources that no one — left or right — can defend.

Andre will establish a dedicated behavioral health court in Section J, continuing the work Judge Calvin Johnson pioneered with the Mental Health Treatment Court in 2002. Defendants with diagnosable mental health conditions will be connected to treatment, monitored for compliance, and given a real path off the merry-go-round of justice — rather than cycling through the system at taxpayer expense for the rest of their lives.

This isn’t soft on crime. It’s smart on crime.

03 — Re-Entry

Faith and Community-Based Re-Entry Programming

A sentence doesn’t end recidivism. What happens after the courthouse door closes determines whether a defendant comes back.

Andre will build structured partnerships with faith communities and neighborhood organizations to provide the re-entry support — housing, employment, mentorship, accountability — that government alone cannot deliver. These institutions know their neighbors. They have the trust, the reach, and the mission to do what a courtroom cannot: reweave the fabric of the community so that the same faces stop appearing at Tulane and Broad year after year.

“The courthouse is one part of the system. The community is the other. We have to engage both if we’re serious about public safety.”

— Andre Gaudin, Jr.