Examines offices that provide representation for indigent defendants through a salaried staff of full-time or part-time attorneys who are employed as direct government employees or through a public, nonprofit organization.
Examines offices that provide representation for indigent defendants through a salaried staff of full-time or part-time attorneys who are employed as direct government employees or through a public, nonprofit organization. Public defender offices are categorized according to whether they are principally funded and administered at the state government level, county level, or through a combination of county and state government. Topics include public defender office staffing, caseloads, expenditures, and standards and guidelines used by the nearly 1,000 public defender offices found across 49 states and the District of Columbia.
- In 2007, 964 public defender offices across the nation received nearly 6 million indigent defense cases.
- Half of all state-based public defender offices had formal caseload limits in place in 2007.
- Misdemeanor cases accounted for about 40% of all cases received by state-based public defender offices and about 50% of the cases received by county-based offices.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics is re-issuing the report, Public Defender Offices, 2007 - Statistical Tables, originally published on November 19, 2009, to correct errors recently identified in the data. The revised report corrects caseload data for one office, excludes caseload data that was determined to be unreliable (out-of-range) for another office, and excludes all data for seven additional offices that were found to be ineligible (out-of-scope). These changes affected data in the text and tables. An errata sheet explaining the purpose of these revisions is also available for review.