The Indigent Defense Research Association

  Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. If you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to Venita Embry at   vembry@rti.org .  Recordings of IDRA Spring 2024 Virtual Conference The recordings of all of the recorded panels from the Virtual Conference May 1 st through 3 rd are now available in a playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-x1JglqDoemjDH0Gm793eitWekd-Fb2O Not all panels were recorded depending on panelist’s preferences, but all the others are included in this playlist.  Articles Mikaela Wolf-Sorokin, Liz Bradley & Whitney Viets, Padilla’s Broken Promise: Pennsylvania Case Study, 26 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 1046 (2024). Available at https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/jcl/vol26/iss4/4/ In 2010, the Supreme Court held in Padilla v. Kentucky that criminal defense attorneys have a constitutional obligation to advise

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. If you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to Venita Embry at   vembry@rti.org .  Articles Baćak, V., Lageson, S., & Powell, K. (2024). The Stress of Injustice: Public Defenders and the Frontline of American Inequality. Social Forces .   Available for download:  link . Fairness in the criminal legal system is unattainable without effective legal representation of indigent defendants, yet we know little about the experience of attorneys who do this critical work. Using semi-structured interviews, our study investigated occupational stress in a sample of 78 attorneys representing indigent clients across the United States. We show how the chronic stressors experienced at work culminate in what we define as the stress of injustice: the social and psychological demands of working in a punitive sys

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. If you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to Venita Embry at vembry@rti.org .  Reports DeNike, M. Equitable Defense: Holistic Defense for Court-Appointed Counsel Cases.    https://www.cjcj.org/media/equitable_defense.pdf A number of studies point to disparities in criminal justice outcomes based on whether indigent defendants are represented by a public defender or a court-appointed private attorney. As more and more public defender’s offices adopt holistic defense models, there is a danger that the gap in defense quality will further widen. Research on the effectiveness of holistic defense irrefutably establishes that the inclusion of social workers on defense teams results in more options for judges, less jail and prison time for defendants, and increased access to treatment. In San Francisco, t

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. Contact IDRA if you have suggestions we should add to our list! Book Matthew J. Greife, Thwarting Death: A Legal Culture of Resistance Among Colorado Death Penalty Defense Lawyers . Springer. [From the website:] This book examines the lived experiences of death penalty defense lawyers and how they created a legal culture of resistance to the death penalty. It argues that an important social component of death penalty abolition in the state of Colorado was due to the efforts of capital defense attorneys. Specifically, it explores how the death penalty defense lawyers created and embraced a legal culture of resistance which compelled the attorneys to fight tenaciously in order to win life sentences for clients that had committed brutal homicides. A legal culture of resistance does not exist in a vacuum. Thwarting Death  traces the lived experience of 15 death penalty defense

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 . Videos Public Defense and Public Defenders in Latin America and the United States. Webinar co-hosted by the Indigent Defense Research Association, Rutgers University, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, the University of California at Irvine, and Universidad Autonoma do Barcelona. Articles  Ashlee Beazley, Take (What They Say) With a Pinch of Salt: Engaging in Empirical Research to Understand the Parameters of the ‘Quality’ in ‘Poor-Quality Defence Lawyering’   2022, 2/1, Journal of Legal Research Methodology , 75-99. [This study] seeks to construct a theoretical framework by which poor-quality (insufficient) defence representation may be identified, understood, contextualised, addressed and remedied. To this end, the e

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 Ronald Burns, Brie Diamond & Kendra N. Bowen, "Does type of counsel matter? A Comparison of outcomes in cases involving retained- and assigned counsel." Journal of Crime and Justice. Existing research yields inconsistent results with regard to differences among type of counsel in criminal cases. Studies in the area generally compare the effectiveness of indigent versus retained counsel, and public defenders versus assigned counsel, and focus on broad categories of crime. The present work expands this literature through comparing case outcomes between assigned and retained counsel in the processing of criminal trespassing cases. It also contributes through measuring type of counsel in relation to the imp