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- Title
THE PROBLEMATIC STRUCTURE OF INDIGENT DEFENSE DELIVERY.
- Authors
Primus, Eve Brensike
- Abstract
The national conversation about criminal justice reform largely ignores the critical need for structural reforms in the provision of indigent defense. In most parts of the country, decisions about how to structure the provision of indigent defense are made at the local level, resulting in a fragmented patchwork of different indigent defense delivery systems. In most counties, if an indigent criminal defendant gets representation at all, it comes from assigned counsel or flatfee contract lawyers rather than public defenders. In those assigned-counsel and flat-fee contract systems, the lawyers representing indigent defendants have financial incentives to get rid of assigned criminal cases as quickly as possible. Those incentives fuel mass incarceration because the lawyers put less time into each case than their public defender counterparts and achieve poorer outcomes for their clients. Moreover, empirical research shows that assigned-counsel and flat-fee contract systems are economically more costly to the public fisc than public defender systems.
- Subjects
CRIMINAL justice system; CRIMINAL defendants; MONETARY incentives; MASS incarceration; EMPIRICAL research
- Publication
Michigan Law Review, 2023, Vol 122, Issue 2, p207
- ISSN
0026-2234
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.36644/mlr.122.2.problematic