Plight of the Indigent Accused in America - An Examination of Alternative Models for Providing Criminal Defense Services to the Poor, Executive Summary

The counties were located in five States and operated a variety of systems, including a contract defense system, a coordinated assigned counsel system, a mixed ad hoc assigned counsel approach, and a part-time defender system. Data came from site visits and detailed analyses of costs and dockets in 6 sites; interviews in 12 counties; and computer analysis of 2,400 court cases. Five factors affected the relative costs in each jurisdiction. These were the type of defense system chosen, the rate of compensation paid to attorneys, the average number of hours spent in processing cases, the processing time for the court system as a whole, and whether or not the defense system used a staffed or fee-per-case approach. Other findings focused on the relationship between costs, quality of service, assigned counsel fees and other defense system costs, budgeting and planning, the impact of inadequate financing on the actions of defense attorneys, performance comparisons, and quality controls. For the full report of which this is an executive summary, see NCJ 98679-81.