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 Amina Azhar-Grahama, Carina Gallo. Reimagining public defense advocacy in times of Covid-19: lessons from a task force . Vol 33/1 Current Issues in Criminal Justice.   In March 2020, the Contra Costa Public Defenders Association (CCPDA) established a task force to counter the injustices and dangers experienced by clients in custody during the Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose of this commentary is to describe the background and work of the task force, discuss the lessons learned and finally, to identify opportunities for reshaping the criminal justice landscape. In response to the humanitarian crisis in jail, the task force fought for systematic reform, including decarceration. However, while faced with increasingly diver

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 Stanislaw Burdziej, Keith Guzik, and Bartosz Pilitowski, "Fairness at Trial: The Impact of Procedural Justice and Other Experiential Factors on Criminal Defendants’ Perceptions of Court Legitimacy in Poland," 44/2, Law and Social Inquiry , 359-390.  A large body of research supports the procedural justice hypothesis that quality of treatment matters more than outcomes for institutional legitimacy. How fairness matters across legal institutions and geographic settings remains an open question, however. This article uses a survey of criminal defendants to test the factors associated with perceived legitimacy of courts in Poland, a country whose judiciary is currently subject to intense political contestat

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  Hannah Haksgaard, " Court-Appointment Compensation and Rural Access to Justice ."14 University of St. Thomas Journal of Law & Public Policy , 88.  "Hourly rates paid to court-appointed lawyers impact access to justice. Court-appointed lawyers provide necessary counsel in civil and criminal cases, yet hourly rates in many jurisdictions are so low that many lawyers cannot afford to take court-appointed cases. This article argues that low hourly rates cause problems: namely, appointed lawyers will be insufficient in number, inaccessible to their clients, and sometimes even ineffective. These problems are heightened in rural America where they are compounded by the geography of distance and the rural la

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 Mally Shechory Bitton & Anat Mashiach, " From Their Angle: A Look at the Emotional World of Defense Attorneys Who Represent Sex Offenders ." International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology . "Fifteen defense attorneys working for the Public Defender’s Office in Israel were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. The findings indicated two major issues related to defense attorney perception of their work: (1) the distinctiveness of representing sex offenders due to their unique characteristics and (2) the emotional impact of working with sex offenders." Gustavo Fondevila and Miguel Quintana-Navarrete, Pre-trial detention and legal defence in Latin America

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 Azul A. Aguiar-Aguilar Gaining Access to Justice: A Subnational Study of Public Defender Offices in Mexico . Mexican Law Review, New Series . XIII-2. pp. 35-62.  "With the transition to democracy, Latin American countries have embarked on implementing judicial reforms to redesign justice-sector institutions and build up the rule of law in the region.... I examine the extent to which the changes of transitioning from an inquisitorial to an adversarial system and from a non-merit-based career system to a merit-based career system have affected the way legal counsel is provided at subnational public defender offices.... I collected 50 interviews with public defense attorneys from three Mexican states: Baj

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 Joseph J. Avery, Jordan Starck, Yiqiao Zhong, Jonathan D. Avery, and Joel Cooper Is your own team against you? Implicit bias and interpersonal regard in criminal defense , Journal of Social Psychology. "Racial disparities in conviction and incarceration have been lamentable features of legal systems for a long time. Research has addressed the attitudes and decisions of police, prosecutors, jurors, and judges in contributing to these disparities, but very little attention has been paid to defendants’ own team members—i.e., criminal defense attorneys. Researchers have specifically identified this as a “scholarly gap”. To address this, we conducted an empirical study of criminal defense attorneys practicing in