In 2015, the United Nations resolved that promoting ‘rule of law [and] equal access to justice for all’ would be one of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As part of this fifteen year strategy, member states must develop indicators to track progress (or the lack of it) over time. President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum in September 2015 establishing the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (WH-LAIR) and charging it with tracking and improving access to justice in the United States in keeping with the SDGs.

On September 15, 2016, ILS Research Director Andy Davies was invited to present to WH-LAIR on what metrics it should use to track the provision of indigent defense across the country. Davies submitted this three-page paper with several suggested metrics. In his presentation he focused on just four of them. It can be heard here (length 4 minutes):

SDG Presentation Recording

Davies argued that successful metrics have three characteristics:

1. They are feasible - they can be collected easily
2. They are intuitive - they are easy to understand
3. They are profound - they tell you something important

On that basis he suggested the United States should focus on collecting the following four metrics (with priority placed on the first):

1. The percentage of defendants in each criminal court who are assigned counsel
2. Spending on defense services by jurisdiction
3. The proportion of employees in defender offices who are non-lawyers
4. The percentage of persons accused of crimes who believe the outcome of their case was ‘just’

The event was a Civil Society Consultation organized by David Udell from the National Center for Access to Justice at Fordham Law and Risa Kauffman of the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, and supported by the Open Society Foundations. Over 30 people gave presentations on different areas of access to justice, mainly in civil law contexts; four were specifically on the topic of indigent defense.