Indigent defense caseload study reveals public defenders overworked, inadequately funded
I'm not sure a study was needed to determine this, but perhaps this makes it official.
The Supreme Court Indigent Defense Commission has received the study it requested of the indigent defense systems in Clark and Washoe Counties. The Court had previously issued performance standards for public defenders, and commissioned the study to determine whether caseload standards were necessary to insure compliance with performance standards. However, that task as assigned could not be performed, because the performance standards were not implement until April 2009, while the study was performed in December 2008. Instead, the study compared caseload standards employed by other jurisdictions to determine what standards could allow the performance standards to be met.
Nevertheless, the study, performed by the Spangenberg Group and the Center for Justice, Law and Society at George Mason University, determined that the public defender offices are far too inadequately funded to meet the standards already in place. The offices rely on the county for nearly all of their funding, and have too few lawyers, too little support staff, and too few resources to be able to achieve at the performance standards expected by the recent change. One chart shows that attorney staffing of the Clark County Public Defenders office should be increased by at least 32%, and as much as 82%, in order to achieve caseload standards comparable to other jurisdictions in the western U.S.
Download the study here.
