Indigent Injustice

Abstract

The United States Constitution guarantees every citizen access to counsel to fundamentally preserve the right to a fair trial. Over two-thirds of criminal defendants lack the resources to secure an attorney and are thereby deemed indigent by the court. The dearth of generalizable data for indigent defendant outcomes leads legal scholars to cite the pragmatic and theoretical mechanisms for evaluating the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of publicly funded defenders. Empirical evidence is restricted by studies conducted in specific jurisdictions and on particular stages within criminal processing. Consequently, a broad understanding of indigent defendants' outcomes is limited and often disjointed; thus, underscoring the need for a systemic evaluation of the current empirical literature. The goal of the current study was to conduct a meta-analysis on studies of outcomes for people with public defenders, assigned counsel, and retained attorneys to better understand what (if any) discrepancies exist in criminal legal outcomes as a function of indigent defense status. Specifically, this study examined the current empirical literature on pretrial, case, sentencing, and post-case outcomes for indigent defendants compared to defendants with private/retained attorneys and for those with public defenders compared to assigned counsel. Overall, results showed that indigent defendants experience worse outcomes across court processing stages than defendants with retained counsel. Results showed fewer discrepancies between defendants with public defenders and assigned counsel. Findings suggest that the disadvantages indigent defendants experience in criminal legal outcomes are likely an effect of systemic and individual biases rather than a consequence of ineffective counsel.