The Fiscal Crisis as an Opportunity for Criminal Justice Reform: Defenders Building Alliances With Fiscal Conservatives
| Publication year | 2010 |
Georgia State University Law Review
Article 7
4-3-2013
The Fiscal Crisis as an Opportunity for Criminal Justice Reform: Defenders Building Alliances With Fiscal Conservatives
Randolph N. Jonakait Larry Eger
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Jonakait, Randolph N. and Eger, Larry (2011) "The Fiscal Crisis as an Opportunity for Criminal Justice Reform: Defenders Building Alliances With Fiscal Conservatives," Georgia State University Law Review: Vol. 28: Iss. 4, Article 7. Available at: http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/gsulr/vol28/iss4/7
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THE FISCAL CRISIS AS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM: DEFENDERS BUILDING ALLIANCES WITH FISCAL CONSERVATIVES
Randolph N. Jonakait and Larry Eger1
The national economic crisis provides a two-edged sword for public defenders and others concerned with the defense of indigents. The trend of slashing defender budgets that existed even before the recent economic downturn can be expected to continue. As Stephanie McAlister notes, "Indigent defense systems nationwide are chronically underfunded, forcing individual lawyers to carry excessive caseloads."2 Many of these lawyers, operating in crisis mode, are "forced to provide inadequate defense due to underfunding and the subsequent excessive caseloads."3 For example, "the Missouri State Public Defender system is overworked and underfunded. The office of the public defender faces a caseload crisis, caused in part by an ever-increasing number of prosecutions and a lack of commensurate increases in resources for the system."4 A committee established by the Missouri Senate in 2006 "found that six years had passed without the public defender's office adding any staff, yet the system's annual caseload totals rose by 12,000 cases."5 Sean O'Brien asks the following about the Missouri system: "What does a system on the brink look like? Low salaries cause high turnover, low morale, and recruitment difficulties. Some defenders work second jobs to pay student loans. Between 2001 and 2005, the cumulative turnover rate was nearly 100%."6
1. Larry Eger is the Public Defender for Florida's 12th Judicial District. Randolph N. Jonakait is a Professor at New York Law School.
2. Stephanie I. McAlister, Note, Between South Beach and a Hard Place: The
Underfunding of the Miami-Dade Public Defender's Office and the Resulting Ethical Double Standard, 64 U. Miami L. Rev. 1317, 1323 (2010).
3. Id.
4. Chris Dandurand, Note, Walking Out on the Check: How Missouri Abandoned Its Public Defenders and Left the Poor to Foot the Bill, 76 Mo. L. Rev. 185, 188 (2011).
5. Id.
6. Sean D. O'Brien, Missouri's Public Defender Crisis: Shouldering the Burdens Alone, 75 Mo. L.
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Minnesota provides another example of a system confronting a crisis. "As a result of budget cuts and the simultaneous effect of increased case filings in Minnesota, the public defender workloads have increased, and the time spent by individual public defenders on cases has also decreased."7 Minnesota budget cuts have led to large layoffs and unfilled vacancies.8
Examples of budgetary problems for defenders abound. McAlister cites funding cutbacks in New York City and Kentucky and notes that "[a]s of November 2008, public defenders' offices in seven states were refusing to take on new cases or had sued to limit them, on the grounds that excessive workloads made it impossible to fulfill their constitutional duties."9 Florida, too, has been affected by limited funding. "The Sunshine State is not exempt from the growing nationwide indigent defense crisis. The problem in Florida is similar to the problems experienced across the country—too little money, too few attorneys, and too many defendants."10
The present economic crisis will only make this situation worse. What Judge Slieter writes about Minnesota applies to much, if not all, of the country. "[T]he economic slowdown has affected the public defense system as drastically as any part of government."11 Public defenders are facing a deepening crisis because of our governments' financial difficulties.
But these economic problems also present an unusual opportunity for reforming criminal justice. Some fiscal conservatives are
Rev. 853, 866 (2010); see also Dandurand, supra note 4, at 186 ("New attorneys enter the practice with ever-increasing amounts of law school debt and see little incentive to endure the work load of the public defender system for any longer than it takes to find another job.").
7. Judge Randall J. Slieter & Elizabeth M. Randa, The Minnesota Public Defender System: A Change of Governance Should Occur for the State to Effectively Fulfill Its Constitutional Obligation, 37 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 599, 610-11 (2011).
8. See William I. Bernard, Something's Gotta Give: Minnesota Must Revise Its Procedure for Determining Eligibility for Appointment of Public Defenders, 37 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 630, 644 (2011) ("These 2008 vacancies equaled fifteen percent of the total number of public defenders statewide. . . . The Board of Public Defense's anticipated loss of funding from 2009 caused the elimination of ninety-eight attorney positions or twenty percent of the attorney positions statewide.").
9. McAlister, supra note 2, at 1323.
10. Id. at 1324.
11. Slieter & Randa, supra note 7, at 610; see also Bernard, supra note 8, at 631 ("Given the necessity to balance the state's budget in these difficult economic times, increasing the funding for the Board of Public Defense, while desirable, does not appear to be possible.").
2012] OPPORTUNITY FOR REFORM 1161
beginning to realize that increased criminalization and lengthier sentences have led to huge increases in prison budgets without truly increasing society's safety. Politicians and organizations that may not have been especially sympathetic to indigent defense in the past are reconsidering many "tough-on-crime" policies because of the harm they do to the economy. Concerned about state taxes and economic health, they are, or should be, concerned about the kinds of criminal justice reform that defenders can support.
Thus, the financial crisis, while causing problems for defenders, also provides an opportunity for defenders to help bring about beneficial changes in criminal justice. Public defenders, with their firsthand experience, perhaps know better than anyone else aspects of the criminal justice system that have senselessly driven up state budgets without increasing public safety. Public defenders should identify and collect data about these policies and laws and present this information to the fiscal conservatives. Defenders should seek to support and expand the conservative reform efforts. And in states where fiscal conservatives have not been advocating reforms, defenders need to educate the public on how tough-on-crime policies are leading to unsustainable budgets. Florida provides an example of the possibilities.
I. Fiscal Conservatives and Prison Budgets
Florida TaxWatch, described by others as a "budget watchdog group that gets heavy support from business interests,"12 identifies itself as a "private, non-profit, non-partisan research institute [whose] mission is to provide . . . high quality, independent research and education on government revenues, expenditures, taxation, public policies and programs and to increase the productivity and accountability of Florida government."13 TaxWatch has now taken positions on criminal justice that few, if any, fiscally conservative,
12. Repeal of Mandatory Sentences Urged in Florida, Gainesville.com (Mar. 11, 2011, 1:41 PM), http://www.gainesville.com/article/20110311/WIRE/110319894.
13. About Florida TaxWatch, FloridaTaxWatch, http://www.floridataxwatch.org/aboutus (last visited Feb. 16, 2011).
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pro-business groups were taking before the economic downturn. It has suggested a range of changes in Florida's penal laws in order to reduce incarceration rates. The proposals may be driven solely by the recognition that spending money on Florida's prisons is not sustainable for a healthy economy, but defense organizations, which may see additional reasons for reform, should seek to aid and expand the conservative recommendations.
In its recent report, A Billion Dollars and Growing: Why Prison Bonding is Tougher on Florida's Taxpayers Than on Crime, Florida TaxWatch charts the enormous growth in Florida's prisons.14 "From 1970 to 2010, Florida's prison population increased from nearly 8,800 to 102,000."15 TaxWatch squelches any contention that this resulted merely from Florida's larger populace. "The state's population nearly tripled during that period, but that growth cannot explain the more than eleven-fold increase in the prison population."16 Instead, Florida simply imprisons a greater percentage of Floridians. "The rate of incarceration . . . has jumped from .13 percent to .54 percent. Forty years ago, the rate of incarceration was one quarter of what it is today."17
TaxWatch also dismisses any argument that a rise in crime explains the imprisonment surge:
If population growth cannot account for the rapid increase in the prison population, the incidence of crime does not explain it either. . . . [W]hile the crime rate has fluctuated over time, there has been a general decline in index crimes since the late 1980's while the prison population rate has
14. Collins Ctr. for Pub. Pol'y & Florida TaxWatch, A Billion Dollars and Growing: Why Prison Bonding Is Tougher on Florida's Taxpayers Than on Crime (2011), available at http://www.floridata...
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