The Case of the Mounting Cases

Public defenders in the state of Missouri are overwhelmed, and they are not going to get the relief they need anytime soon.

Last year I did a three-part series on our local justice system called "Justice Delayed." (Click here for Part I, Part II, or Part III) Locals leaders all seemed to be saying the same thing: the jail is overcrowded, judges are handling too many cases, and the public defenders are hopelessly understaffed.

This year, legislators passed a bill that attempted to address part of the problem by putting caps on the number of cases public defenders could handle. Once the limit is reached, the defense of people accused of low-level crimes would be contracted out to private attorneys. Governor Nixon just vetoed that bill.

According to today's News-Leader article, Nixon said putting caps only shifts the burden to others in the criminal justice system. Additional funding for the justice system as a whole is what's really needed.

The long and the short is: yes, we need more public defenders, but then we also need more judges, more jail space, and so on. Each part of the system feeds the other.

Public defenders seem to be lowest on the priority list, too. What incentive is there for the state to increase funding for the defenses of the people charged with state crimes?

And it's not just a local problem. Public defenders are stretched-too-thin across the country.

Here, there, and everywhere the issue is the same: either our criminal justice system needs to get bigger through additional funding or we have to start getting choosy about who we want to go to jail.

If the state or federal government makes a push for more jails, defenders and judges, the average citizen should wonder where the money is going to come from. It's got to come from other areas of the state budget, or from new taxes.

So, this was my thought: if raising taxes is not an option with voters, and I suspect it's not, then perhaps we should look at not filling our jails and prisons with drug offenders.

This seems like a good idea as drug laws are, by their very nature, unconstitutional. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" should mean I can't tell you what to do with your body and authorities shouldn't govern the lives of consenting adults. As I mentioned in my original post though, for years I've been very conflicted over drug laws because I have seen at least one person's life change after a trip to jail.

Well, you may be wondering (as I was) just how many people are in jails or prisons for drugs, anyway?

According to the Department of Justice, in June of last year there were over 2.3 million people in federal or state prisons or in local jails. On average, local jails were running at 95 percent capacity.

In 2005, over 250,000 of the people in state prisons were drug offenders, which was roughly 20 percent of the total population. This number was actually slightly higher than the number of people incarcerated for property crimes. Violent crimes accounted for more than half of the total number of people in state prison.

What I found was that almost 1 percent of the total U.S. population is incarcerated. And, I think its safe to say roughly 1/5 of those are there for drug offenses.

When I spoke last year to the district defender of Springfield's public defender office, Rod Hackathorn, he said each attorney handles 150 to 180 at any given time. He said he'd like to see the caseload down to around 100 per defender.

If local numbers are like the national figures, then it seems that even a full-scale public groundswell movement to repeal our nation's drug laws wouldn't fix our public defender's problems. That's a shame.

For a moment, I thought I had an idea that could help.