Prison Legal News — Public Defenders — Galsworthy Criminal Justice Reform Program

Public Defenders

Defendants on the lower end of the socio-economic scale find themselves at the mercy of public defenders who are swamped with cases, understaffed, and underfunded. Research shows that even before mass incarceration accelerated in the 1980s, overburdened systems of indigent defense struggled to meet the 6th Amendment constitutional mandate. Public defenders usually have the deck stacked against them due to discovery laws favoring prosecutors and lack of sufficient resources.

Appointed Defense Lawyers, Public Defenders: Overworked, Underpaid, Ineffective

“The overwhelming majority of the U.S. prison population is made up of poor people. This also creates a back-breaking, mind-boggling burden for public defenders, and in jurisdictions without a public defender office, lawyers who are appointed by judges to represent indigent criminal defendants. With only 60 minutes to an hour and only 24 hours in a day, the sheer volume of criminal defendants assigned to and needing assistance from what few public defenders and appointment-receptive lawyers there are available, an overwhelming workload is created that none of these lawyers can handle and still be able to deliver the reasonably effective assistance that the Sixth Amendment requires.“

Criminal Legal News

May 15, 2019

Lack of Funding, OverbookedPhillip ReevesMay 15, 2019Prison Legal NewsComment

Public Defenders

Galsworthy CJR Program

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