In a New York Times op-ed, John Pfaff says, “Funding public defense would ensure that poor people’s constitutional rights are protected.”
Over the past year, everyone from the conservative Right on Crime project to the Black Lives Matter movement has pushed criminal justice reform to the forefront of political debates. Yet politicians at every level of government remain almost completely silent about one of the biggest crises facing criminal justice: the utter collapse of indigent defense.
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Not surprisingly, public defense finds itself starved of resources while facing impossible caseloads that mock the idea of justice for the poor.
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There is, however, a way out of this, one that the presidential candidates of both parties should embrace, one that should have broad bipartisan appeal. And it is an approach that no one is talking about.
The federal government, which now provides just a few million dollars per year to prop up local indigent defense services, could make an annual grant of $4 billion to state and local governments for indigent defense. This is a mere 0.3 percent of the federal government’s approximately $1.2 trillion discretionary budget. This money would triple spending on indigent defense, especially if the grant was tied to pre-existing spending by local governments so they couldn’t just cut their own spending one-for-one with the grant.
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If defendants had well-funded, effective representation, our adversarial system would do what it is intended to do. What we have right now, however, simply is not adversarial: relatively well-funded, well-staffed prosecutor offices square off against public defenders whose caseloads defy imagination.
Funding public defense would ensure that poor people’s constitutional rights are protected, would advance a commitment to justice shared by liberals and conservatives alike, and would help roll back our staggering prison population.
It is also feasible, cheap by federal standards, and would have powerful, long-lasting effects.