352 Cases Per Attorney

by Matt Kelley · 2009-11-30 20:17:00 UTC
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A new report from the federal government looks at public defenders across the country in 2007 and finds a system with staggering caseloads -- and some states handling the flood better than others.

More than six million cases flowed through the nation's public defense offices in 2007, and they were handled by about 17,000 attorneys -- that's an average of 352 cases per attorney that year. Public defense systems are structured differently across the country, and the numbers released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics look only at state and county public defense offices, setting aside appointed and contract attorneys.

Looking at just felony and misdemeanor cases -- eliminating civil cases and ordinance violations -- public defenders in state-based systems averaged 88 felonies and 147 misdemeanors in 2007, still a hefty number of cases. And only half of the 20 or so states with statewide public defense systems reported that they impose caseload limits on attorneys. A few of the states without limits saw the greatest burden - Colorado, for example, has no limits and 229 felony cases per attorney.

Get all the data here. (PDF)

Staffing cuts -- and therefore, caseload spikes -- have been hitting PD offices hard during this difficult year for state budgets. Support staff is sometimes the first to go when budgets get tight, and the loss of these critical team members can be devastating for the quality of representation. The BJS study found that the 17,000 attorneys in 2007 were aided by 11,000 support staff - from secretaries to file clerks to investigators and paralegals. Prosecutors have investigators on their side -- they're called police -- so when public defenders lose their investigators, the scales become even more unbalanced.

This weekend, a Kentucky county learned that it must cut 30 percent of its budget for next year and an Indiana county announced that it was cutting several attorney and support staff positions. Prosecutors' offices are feeling the pinch, too, and a Michigan DA is thinking about suing his own county over deep cuts on the table.

H/t Crime Report

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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