NEWSINDIGENT DEFENSE

Since 1990, University of Michigan students have been offered unique, transformative opportunities to learn and create side by side with incarcerated youth and adults. Through coursework that often leads to participation in the university-sponsored Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), undergraduates have collaborated with professors, alumni and community members to facilitate arts-based workshops in 24 prisons, six juvenile facilities and seven under-resourced high schools across the state.

Professor Buzz Alexander, founder of PCAP, had been teaching a class, English 319, about the intersections of theater and social change for six years when two lifers at the Florence Crane Women’s Facility asked to register for the course. He consented, and each week during that semester traveled to the facility with two students to meet with the incarcerated women. During these meetings, students and professor engaged in improvisational theater activities, analyzing the racial, class and power dynamics at play in the situations they confronted. They explored their shared space, including the similarities and striking differences in the contexts of their lives.

When states charge poor defendants for legal representation, they compromise the constitutional right to an attorney and create a tenacious cycle between poverty and incarceration. But the practice of charging steep, unbending fees for public defense is widespread in the U.S., according to a report released today by the Brennan Center at New York University School of Law.

The new report looks at the 15 states with the country's largest prison populations and found that all 15 have some form of "user fees" for defendants who choose to accept an appointed defense attorney, and that states and municipalities faced with budget shortfalls have expanded these fees in recent years.

Most states don't consider the defendant's ability to pay before imposing the fees, and many will revoke parole for the failure to pay, creating de facto debtor's prisons. Perhaps even worse, some states will deny necessities like drivers licenses while a defendant has an outstanding debt. A driver's license is, of course, necessary to get to work in most places -- so the debt itself, while piling up with interest rates, can actually prevent a defendant from getting a job to pull out of the debt itself. Begin the vicious cycle.

Take a look at the Brennen Center report's executive summary and USA Today's coverage of the report. (Read more after the jump.)