- Juveniles in Tennessee are routinely jailed without counsel for non-criminal 'status offenses', according to this report from the Center for Public Integrity.
- A controversy in St. Lawrence County surrounds a proposal to increase DA salaries according to this article in the Watertown Daily Times.
- Defendants are increasingly charged for court services that used to be free, according to this national study conducted jointly by NPR and the Brennan Center. Those charged fees for services such as public defenders, room and board at jails, parole supervision and electronic monitoring risk further criminal justice involvement if they fail to pay. The state-by-state results of the research can be found here, some individual profiles here, and the New York Times covered it here. Relatedly, a report from Alameda County, CA, recently produced this handy flowchart (and this report) for figuring out the total cost for court involvement in that county.
- Oneida County will hold a family law CLE June 13 2014, using ILS grant funding. The program is mandatory for Oneida County family law practitioners who wish to be on the assigned counsel panel for that county. A flier for the program can be found here.
- Immigration 'holds' are not mandatory and following several court decisions holding jails liable for the unjust detention of inmates under such holds, Sheriffs are changing their policies to let non-citizen immigrants go, according to this blog posting from the NAPD.
- Differences in performance between assigned counsel and public defender attorneys depend on the labor market according to this new study in the American Law and Economics Review, a summary of which can be found here. Using data from state courts in large counties, the study shows not only that assigned counsel attorneys tend to perform less well than public defenders, but also examines the impact of the availability of other employment for assigned counsel attorneys on that performance gap. When experienced attorneys are able to find work elsewhere, the data suggest, client outcomes get worse and the performance gap widens. Conversely, when opportunities for inexperienced attorneys are plentiful, the performance gap can actually shrink, presumably because they have left the panel.
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