If you’re planning on running for legislative office next election cycle, here’s a ready-made attack for your totally-not-affiliated super-pac to lob at your opponent in a 30-second ad. It’ll be especially damning if you’re running in a New Orleans-area district.
“(Insert opponent’s name here) let accused robbers, rapists and murderers go free! Vote (insert your name here) to make criminals pay for their crimes.”
While it’s a bit of a stretch, it’s not incorrect. The Louisiana legislature refused to adequately fund the Louisiana Public Defender Board in the Fiscal Year 2016-17 budget, with the board seeing a $20.8 million reduction from the existing operating budget. That’s more than a 60 percent decrease in funds.
While the board’s funding does not directly affect whether or not an individual charged with a crime is released before they face trial, it certainly contributes to it.
When public defenders fail to get money from the state government to do their jobs, they have to rely on local court fees. Ironically, this money is usually collected from the type of people public defenders most often represent: poor, usually black citizens who can’t afford lawyers.
According to Chief District Defender for Orleans Parish Derwyn Bunton, Louisiana is unlike any other state in the country in that, on average, two-thirds of a public defender’s office’s budget comes from fees. That means the state has to keep processing people through the criminal justice system, or it will collapse in upon itself from a lack of money.
That’s exactly what’s starting to happen, with revenues from all kinds of legal fines decreasing. Instead of being able to rely on dirty money, taken from poor Louisianans, chief defenders like Bunton have to lay off what few lawyers they already have and refuse to defend certain cases because their offices don’t have the manpower.
It’s gotten to the point that those who the New Orleans public defender’s office can’t defend are being released because nobody can take their case. On Friday, Judge Arthur Hunter Jr. ruled the state cannot keep people in jail without providing them a lawyer, as doing so violates the Sixth Amendment as well as several state and national Supreme Court rulings.
As a result, seven people accused of violent felonies are now free until the state gets its finances in order.
This is a lose/lose situation for everyone. Law and order conservatives are fuming over releasing potentially violent individuals back into the community. Human rights-loving liberals are screeching about how those released were held without a trial for so long.
There are more than 20 bills in the current legislative session related to public defenders. Some of them propose substantial changes to the system, but none of them will bring the change the criminal justice system needs.
Right now, public defenders are paid $45 when a defendant pleads guilty, no contest or flat out loses the case at trial. This incentivizes public defenders to encourage those accused of crimes to take plea bargains, so the system can keep prisons full.
Lawmakers should flip the script. Instead of incentivizing guilty defendants, the state should pay a public defender’s office $60, or some other amount, when he or she wins a case. Public defender’s offices can also use this new revenue to hire more lawyers. It’s the only course of action that addresses the systemic issues with Louisiana’s administration of criminal justice, short of tearing it down and starting all over again.
Jack Richards is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from New Orleans, Louisiana.