Rational choice theory
Submitted without comment, an op-ed from the New York Times:
Free-Market Justice: an econometric study of how effective public defenders really are...
Among the findings:
The average sentence for clients of public defenders was almost three years longer than the average for clients of private lawyers...
(W)hen we removed the control for the seriousness of the crime, public defenders performed relatively worse, not better (five years more incarceration versus three years more)...
(M)arginally indigent defendants who choose public defenders tend to be guilty...
Prescription:
a less drastic solution than spending more on public defenders... the remedy may simply be to tighten the mechanisms we use to determine indigency...
The author:
Morris B. Hoffman is a Colorado state trial judge and a fellow at the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research.
The paper he co-authored, "An Empirical Study of Public Defender Effectiveness: Self-Selection by the “Marginally Indigent”" is here (pdf file).
4 Comments:
I wonder if it takes into account the fact that many judges give harsher sentences to indigent clients on purpose - in order to encourage them to hire someone the next time.
Ah.. the money game.
I saw this article. I wonder if it takes into account judges who, like the economists, assume that private attorneys are better. When I fight tooth and nail for my clients' rights, judges get grouchy. When a private attorney buries a case in paper, he/she doesn't get screamed at for wasting the court's time... I think that judges and DAs have a strong bias favoring private attorneys.
How can an "empirical" study that measures outcome by incarceration length NOT CONTROL FOR THE DEFENDANT'S PRIOR RECORD; which, of course, is the one most determinative factor in a court's sentencing decision?
In my jurisdiction, the private bar gets more favors because they tend to be the ones in bar associations, netwoking etc.. Thus, they have more influence about judicial retention and other matters affecting judges. The courtroom PDs, hell we're the courtroom PDs. We and our clients will be treated like the red-headed stepchildren that we are.
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