Make-or-Buy? The Provision of Indigent Defense Services in the U.S.

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Yotam Shem-Tov
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Relative Efficacy ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Prison Sentence ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The U.S

Most criminal defendants cannot afford to hire an attorney. To provide constitutionally mandated legal services, states commonly use either private court-appointed attorneys or a public defender organization. This paper investigates the relative efficacy of these two modes of indigent defense by comparing outcomes of co-defendants assigned to different types of attorneys within the same case. Using data from San Francisco, I show that in multiple defendant cases public defender assignment is plausibly as good as random. I find that public defenders reduce the probability of any prison sentence by 22% and the length of prison sentences by 10%.

Introduction

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Private Charity ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The 1960S

Today, thousands of public defenders around the United States represent indigent defendants in criminal proceedings. At a moment of widespread concern about mass incarceration and racial and class inequality, public defenders are seen both as participants in, and adversaries of, the carceral state. The introduction to this book provides an overview of how public defenders became so widespread in American courtrooms. At the turn of the twentieth century, many elite lawyers expressed skepticism about the public defender. They posited that the legal profession should remain independent from the state as much as possible, and that indigent defense was better handled by private charity. They established voluntary defender organizations. But by the 1960s, prevailing views had changed. Many elite lawyers now endorsed the public defender, especially after the Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright, which expanded the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The book argues that these developments can be explained by shifts in liberalism and how lawyers conceived of the profession’s place within liberal democracy.

A Permanent Crisis

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 117-150
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Private Charity ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Trial Advocacy ◽  
Reform Organizations

This chapter traces the rocky implementation of Gideon v. Wainwright between 1963 and 1973, continuing the Massachusetts case study begun in chapter 2 and also addressing developments in Philadelphia and other localities. Although states could technically comply with Gideon in a variety of ways (e.g. appointing private counsel case-by-case),many lawyers and reform organizations interpreted Gideon as a broader mandate to establish and expand institutionalized public defender offices. The Ford Foundation and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA) embarked upon the National Defender Project, an ambitious nationwide effort. As a result of such efforts, the 1960s witnessed change and growth in public defender offices around the country. In Massachusetts, for example, the organization initially founded as a voluntary defender was converted from a private charity into a statewide public defender agency, hired dozens of new lawyers, and was soon handling tens of thousands of cases each year. Yet, criticisms quickly emerged that public defenders had overwhelming caseloads and resorted too often to plea bargaining, rather than trial advocacy. Reformers diagnosed a new problem, the “indigent defense crisis” that persists today.

Local Injustice

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 151-180
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
War On Crime ◽  
The Government

With snapshots of Massachusetts and Mississippi, among other examples, this chapter continues to trace how the implementation of Gideon v. Wainwright fell short of expectations in local communities. In particular, it examines some of the efforts funded by the National Defender Project, an initiative of the Ford Foundation and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA). This initiative funded the establishment and expansion of public defender offices around the country. Yet many challenges remained. Criminal defendants themselves complained that public defenders did not sufficiently understand their circumstances—spurring new experiments like the “community defender,” a new model of public defender with stronger ties to the neighborhoods where many defendants lived. By the early 1970s, as indigent defense reformers continued to navigate these challenges, the government had declared “War on Crime” and criminal caseloads had begun to rise—early harbingers of the phenomenon later labelled mass incarceration. Over the course of the twentieth century, lawyers had coalesced in theory around the idea of the public defender as a means to guarantee equality in the criminal courts, but remained unsuccessful at fully implementing that idea around the country.

scholarly journals Challenges Faced by the Clayton County, Georgia Public Defender’s Office

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
James F. Anderson ◽  
Christine A. VanDross, Esq. ◽  
Kelley Reinsmith-Jones ◽  
Adam H. Langsam
Keyword(s):  
Federal Courts ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Adequate Funding ◽  
Sixth Amendment ◽  
Legal Defense ◽  
The U.S

While the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees indigent defendant’s legal representation in state and federal courts, public defenders’ offices are challenged by the lack of resources to represent an endless flow of clients, attract and retain talented counsel, enlist the help of expert witnesses, as well as deliver the best quality defense. This study addresses the daily strain of defending clients who are not always the most cooperative in helping their own defense, but it also reveals the struggles and challenges faced by an urban southern public defender’s office and what changes need to be implemented to improve the public defender system. In the end, this study finds that public defender programs need adequate funding to fully deliver a quality legal defense.

scholarly journals Towards a typology of risk preference: Four risk profiles describe two thirds of individuals in a large sample of the U.S. population

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renato Frey ◽  
Shannon Duncan ◽  
Elke U. Weber
Keyword(s):  
Risk Preference ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Risk Profiles ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Demographic Indicators ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Small Set ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The U.S

A longstanding goal in the behavioral sciences has been to model people’s risk preferences. Previous approaches tended to measure risk preference either as a general or domain-specific construct, and typically assumed that it is necessary to describe different individuals separately on (possibly) multiple dimensions of risk preference. Here, we pursue a different approach and ask: Do different types of individuals with similar configurations of general and domain-specific dimensions of risk preference exist, and thus, can a substantial proportion of people be described with a small set of basic risk profiles? To answer this question we modeled data of a large and diverse sample of the U.S. population (N = 3,123) in a comprehensive and novel way. Our contribution is twofold: first, using data of the Domain-Specific Risk- Taking Scale (DOSPERT) we establish a multidimensional trait space of risk preference including general and domain-specific components. Second, model-based cluster analyses in this space indicated that 66% of participants in our sample can be described with four basic risk profiles, which are systematically related to socio-demographic indicators. Our typological approach has implications for current theories of risk preference as well as potential policy implications.

Immigration and the tech industry: As a labour shortage remedy, for innovation, or for cost savings?

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Matloff
Keyword(s):  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Brain Drain ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Foreign Workers ◽  
Service Firms ◽  
It Service ◽  
Labour Shortage ◽  
Labour Costs ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The U.S

The two main reasons cited by the U.S. tech industry for hiring foreign workers--remedying labour shortages and hiring "the best and the brightest"--are investigated, using data on wages, patents, and R&D work, as well as previous research and industry statements. The analysis shows that the claims of shortage and outstanding talent are not supported by the data, even after excluding the Indian IT service firms. Instead, it is shown that the primary goals of employers in hiring  foreign workers are to reduce labour costs and to obtain "indentured" employees. Current immigration policy is causing an ‘Internal Brain Drain’ in STEM.

O controle judicial do consumo de drogas: o caso da Drug Court da cidade de San Francisco, EUA

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Frederico Policarpo
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Drug Court ◽  
Public Defender

Este artigo é baseado em dados etnográficos que produzi durante o trabalho de campo de um ano na Drug Court da cidade de San Francisco, EUA. Mostrarei como as negociações entre leis e normas são, de fato, atualizadas na judge’s chambers (sala do juiz) da Drug Court. Eu tive a permissão do judge para frequentar as reuniões fechadas ao público na judge’s chambers depois de estabelecer o diálogo mais próximo com a Public Defender. A proposta deste artigo é apresentar um relato mais descritivo do que analítico dessa etapa do meu trabalho de campo na cidade de San Francisco, EUA, com o intuito de organizar e sistematizar os dados etnográficos para futuras comparações com o contexto carioca.

scholarly journals POWER LAWS IN REAL ESTATE PRICES DURING BUBBLE PERIODS

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 61-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAKAAKI OHNISHI ◽  
TAKAYUKI MIZUNO ◽  
CHIHIRO SHIMIZU ◽  
TSUTOMU WATANABE
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Power Law ◽  
House Price ◽  
Power Laws ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Price Distribution ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Real Estate Prices ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The U.S

How can we detect real estate bubbles? In this paper, we propose making use of information on the cross-sectional dispersion of real estate prices. During bubble periods, prices tend to go up considerably for some properties, but less so for others, so that price inequality across properties increases. In other words, a key characteristic of real estate bubbles is not the rapid price hike itself but a rise in price dispersion. Given this, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether developments in the dispersion in real estate prices can be used to detect bubbles in property markets as they arise, using data from Japan and the U.S. First, we show that the land price distribution in Tokyo had a power-law tail during the bubble period in the late 1980s, while it was very close to a lognormal before and after the bubble period. Second, in the U.S. data we find that the tail of the house price distribution tends to be heavier in those states which experienced a housing bubble. We also provide evidence suggesting that the power-law tail observed during bubble periods arises due to the lack of price arbitrage across regions.

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