The Indigent Defense Research Association

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. Should you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to albdavies@smu.edu.
Articles Justin D. Levinson, Robert J. Smith, Koichi Hioki. Race and Retribution: An Empirical Study of Implicit Bias and Punishment in America. Vol 53, U. C. Davis Law Review, pp. 839-891.
"The study we present in this Article demonstrates that the core support for retribution’s use has been shaken by implicit racial bias. Our national empirical study, conducted with over 500 jury-eligible citizens, shows that race cannot be separated from the concept of retribution itself. The study finds, for example, that Americans automatically associate the concepts of payback and retribution with Black and the concepts of mercy and leniency with White. Furthermore, the study showed that the level of a person’s retribution-race implic…

IDRA is pleased to announce the following Call for Papers for a volume of indigent defense research in the prestigious Justice System Journal. Please consider submitting your manuscripts, and get in touch with any questions!

Call for Papers Special Issue of Justice System Journal Justice for All: Empirical Research on Indigent Defense
Justice System Journal will publish a special issue titled “Justice for All: Empirical Research on Indigent Defense.” This special issue will be guest-edited by Prof. Janet Moore of University of Cincinnati College of Law, and Dr. Andrew Davies of the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University. Moore and Davies co-founded the Indigent Defense Research Association in 2015.

Empirical researchers have turned their attention to indigent defense in new ways in the last several years. Their work has revealed new insights into the nature and importance of indigent defense systems and attorneys. It has generated evidence of the impact def…

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. Should you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to albdavies@smu.edu.
Articles Kelsey S. Henderson & Reveka V. Shteynberg, "Plea decision-making: the influence of attorney expertise, trustworthiness, and recommendation." Psychology, Crime & Law.
Attorney recommendations influence defendant plea decisions; and the degree of influence likely rests on the perceived trustworthiness and level of expertise of the attorney (factors of source credibility). We explored attorney source credibility factors and how these characteristics influence defendants’ plea decision-making. MTurk participants read a hypothetical plea scenario and were asked to imagine themselves as the defendant in a DWI/DUI case making a plea decision; in the scenario, we manipulated the defense attorney’s lev…

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. Should you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to albdavies@smu.edu.

Typically in Notable Recent Publications, we highlight empirical research on indigent defense issues. Occasionally, we also feature pieces written by our members, even when they are non-empirical, or don’t deal with indigent defense topics. In so doing, we hope we can serve both to update IDRA on the latest research in our field, and on the most recent activities by our members.
This week we feature a piece by our friend the late Ken Strutin, formerly Director of Legal Services at the New York State Defenders Association, who passed away suddenly at the end of 2018. His piece, “From Poverty to Personhood: Gideon Unchained,” appeared posthumously in the Mitchell Hamline Law Review this month, and we are pleased to include it her…

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. Should you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to albdavies@smu.edu.
Articles Milan Das – Impediments to Independence: How the Workplace Culture of Public Defender Offices Negatively Affects the Representation of Indigent Defendants. Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, vol 32, pp.469-481. [From the article:] “Part I of this Note will discuss the problematic elements of the organization of indigent defense systems across the country. It will focus on how public defender offices are assigned cases; how the office is subjected to administrative oversight; and the means by which public defenders are remunerated (or not). In Part II, this Note will attempt to use organizational sociology to argue that many of the structural elements of indigent defense systems discussed in Part I-especially those relat…

For a number of years now, the Indigent Defense Research Association has hosted a set of panels at the American Society of Criminology to highlight work in the area of indigent defense research. This year, IDRA is doing the same.

IDRA will be hosting a total of nine panels covering the nexus of defense provision, data collection, and policy advocacy. They include evaluations of new programs, discussions about data collection and research partnerships, and path-breaking work in neglected areas. Presenters hail from at least ten states, a dozen universities and think tanks, several national and international defender organizations, and a wide range of defense providers. IDRA is also pleased to have our first co-sponsored panel with our friends at the International Society for Therapeutic Jurisprudence.

The schedule for the IDRA panels at ASC is below (click the image to see the full-size schedule). The ASC meeting will take place across November 13-16 at the San Francisco Marriott M…