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
Brian J. Ostrom and Jordan Bowman, Examining the Effectiveness of Indigent Defense Team Services: A Multisite Evaluation of Holistic Defense in Practice, Project Summary.
[From the Executive Summary:] The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) evaluated the implementation of holistic defense practices at three public defender offices: the Department of Public Advocacy in Bowling Green, Kentucky; the Hennepin County Public Defender in Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Rhode Island Public Defender in Providence County, Rhode Island. The primary objectives of the project were to examine (1) how indigent defense providers have implemented the principles of holistic defense in practice, (2) how holistic defense practices var…

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.
ArticlesJ. Forbes Farmer, Analyzing and Confronting Managerial Impediments to the Pursuit of Social Justice by Human Service Agencies, Journal of Sociology and Social Work, Vol 7/2.
"Mismanagement and unethical behavior are addressed in this article through the presentation of three fact-based cases written by the author to be used in undergraduate or graduate college classes in sociology, social work or human services that cover such topics as management, probation, homeless shelters and generalist social work agencies. The actions of human service staffers and management are supposed to be professionally constrained by the NASW Code of Ethics. How should a social worker respond when he/she sees a conflict that involves…

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…