NCJ Number
146085
Journal
American Criminal Law Review Volume: 31 Issue: 1 Dated: (Fall 1993) Pages: 73-122
Date Published
1993
Length
50 pages
Annotation
Improvements to indigent defense are discussed.
Abstract
Financial conflicts of interest persist in current indigent defense systems, resulting in an undesirable division of loyalties. If attorneys for the indigent are to be paid at all, they must be paid by someone other than their clients. This article analyzes the structure of the attorney-client relationship and identifies the problems that contractual or institutional arrangements must seek to minimize, i.e., incentive problems, information problems, and insurance problems, describes existing methods for the delivery of indigent defense services, i.e., public defender, contract defense, and assigned counsel programs, and proposes alternatives to existing arrangements. The three alternative approaches discussed are the insurance models, deregulation models, and voucher models. The authors conclude that a voucher system, i.e., one in which lawyers who serve the poor have the freedom to organize their practice as individuals or firms, with or without specialization, and to compete for the business of indigent clients, would be the most effective alternative. The voucher, involving either a lump-sum or variable payment based on services actually rendered, would be the guarantee of state payment that the indigent defendant would present to any individual or group provider of criminal defense services. Indigent defendants would have the same freedom of choice as more affluent defendants; their attorneys would have the same incentive to serve them as they always have had when representing clients other than the poor.