What is it About Defense?

• In Event: Legal Services for the Indigent: Defining and Evaluating Quality in Indigent Defense

Abstract

What empirically verifiable impacts should high quality defense have? Prior work focuses primarily on leniency, and provides some evidence that differences in defense services affect case outcomes in the aggregate. But is leniency a good measure – of defense services, or moreover of justice? For that matter, what exactly are the expected benefits of high quality defense? Drawing on the deliberations of an NSF-supported meeting in 2015, I conceptualize the impacts that quality defense might, or might not, have on case outcomes and justice systems more broadly. I conclude with a review of the incipient work of the New York State Office of Indigent Legal Services on this question.

Author

• Andrew L.B. Davies, NYS Office of Indigent Legal Services