About Kim
Kim believes in reframing the way we approach criminal justice to a “care first, incarceration last” standard in legally eligible cases.
Values
- Preserving families and parental rights in all cases where it can be done safely, consistent with the law, including by ordering compliance with safety plans involving treatment.
- Ensuring that trials are fair and working to reverse the systematic exclusion of people of color from juries.
- Respecting the rights and autonomy of victims by allowing them to be heard fully without threats or coercion and considering their positions before issuing rulings on sentencing.
- Ensuring anyone that appears with a cause properly before the Court is heard respectfully.
- Acknowledging and removing bias and discrimination in our Courts.
- Holding all justice stakeholders accountable, whether they are government or law enforcement, defendants or plaintiffs, corporate entities or individuals.
Goals
- Provide treatment to those who need it and are willing to accept it.
This approach benefits everyone — not just the defendant, but society at large. While the most serious charges are often statutorily ineligible for any form of treatment or alternatives to incarceration, the fact that a defendant has exhibited behavior that represents a danger to society does not make them unsuitable for treatment.
On the contrary, these are the individuals that most require intervention and assistance and where society stands to gain the most by promoting treatment as a solution.
- Improve safety and reduce public expense by enacting tailored programming that actually works.
Warehousing addicts and the mentally ill at great public expense does nothing to improve our safety as a society.
60% of crime victims think there should be a greater emphasis on rehabilitation and 70% believe we should be using options beyond prison .
Mass incarceration is known to make the problem worse.
What little deterrent effect longer sentences have (while the person is incarcerated) is lost almost immediately when a defendant is released.
Biography
Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, Kim Repecka is a diligent worker and a career public servant.
While an undergraduate at Oberlin College, Kim volunteered with the Jails Project at the ACLU of Southern California, which monitors the conditions of LA County Jails under a Court mandate. There, the troubling, inhumane, and unconstitutional conditions that she saw in the jails in 2007 (and that sadly continue to persist today) were the catalyst for her focus on public interest legal work.
Following Kim's graduation from Oberlin College, Kim was admitted to the accelerated program at Southwestern Law School with a full merit-based Wildman/Schumacher scholarship. Going to school full-time did not dampen her desire to provide immediate assistance to her community. Kim’s legal volunteer work spanned many facets of public interest: helping clean up the records of formerly incarcerated people, assisting those who qualified for public assistance receive benefits, and providing legal assistance to veterans, Dreamers, and homeless LGBT youth. She volunteered with Teen Court (a peer-based diversion option for young offenders) and with Small Claims clinics, helping self-represented litigants navigate the court system.
Kim worked with the National Lawyers Guild challenging the impound of drivers’ vehicles, which primarily affected low-income immigrants who were unable to obtain licenses at the time. The advocacy work led LAPD to change its impound policy and the California legislature to resume issuing licenses to qualified drivers regardless of immigration status in 2015.
In recognition of these substantial commitments, Kim received a Public Service Award upon graduation of law school. Kim’s extensive volunteer commitments continued upon graduation assisting at domestic violence, family law, and labor rights clinics.
She eventually began work at the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles in April 2013, representing children and nonminor dependents in dependency (foster care) proceedings. After a year, she began working at Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers as court-appointed counsel for parents and guardians, advising them and helping them to preserve or reunify with their families through treatment and rehabilitation processes. She was promoted to the position of Senior Attorney I.
After over five years in dependency court, Kim transitioned to representing indigent criminal defendants at the Los Angeles Public Defender’s Office, where she advocates for the rights of the accused. She holds law enforcement accountable by challenging illegal searches, unreasonably delayed filings, and government overreach. Kim pursues treatment over incarceration for her clients who struggle with mental health and substance abuse challenges and has secured alternative sentences to incarceration in many cases, including filing and litigating mental health diversion motions. Kim has convinced prosecutors to dismiss multiple cases for issues of inadequate evidence or based on independent investigation. She has successfully litigated many cases where prosecutors would not dismiss cases with insufficient evidence.
In her limited personal time, Kim serves as president of the Pasadena Women’s Rugby team, a D1 team and 501(c)(3) organization, where she’s played since 2013. She enjoys exploring the LA stand-up comedy scene, going to Dodgers games, and spending time with her family and her pet ducks. When she takes time to vacation, she’s usually skiing or camping with her partner (also a public interest attorney) and their dogs, Zack and Addie.
