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Notable Recent Publications, March 2024

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. If you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to Venita Embry at vembry@rti.org .  Reports DeNike, M. Equitable Defense: Holistic Defense for Court-Appointed Counsel Cases.    https://www.cjcj.org/media/equitable_defense.pdf A number of studies point to disparities in criminal justice outcomes based on whether indigent defendants are represented by a public defender or a court-appointed private attorney. As more and more public defender’s offices adopt holistic defense models, there is a danger that the gap in defense quality will further widen. Research on the effectiveness of holistic defense irrefutably establishes that the inclusion of social workers on defense teams results in more options for judges, less jail and prison time for defendants, and increased access to treatment. In San Francisco, t
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Notable Recent Publications, January 2024

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. Contact IDRA if you have suggestions we should add to our list! Book Matthew J. Greife, Thwarting Death: A Legal Culture of Resistance Among Colorado Death Penalty Defense Lawyers . Springer. [From the website:] This book examines the lived experiences of death penalty defense lawyers and how they created a legal culture of resistance to the death penalty. It argues that an important social component of death penalty abolition in the state of Colorado was due to the efforts of capital defense attorneys. Specifically, it explores how the death penalty defense lawyers created and embraced a legal culture of resistance which compelled the attorneys to fight tenaciously in order to win life sentences for clients that had committed brutal homicides. A legal culture of resistance does not exist in a vacuum. Thwarting Death  traces the lived experience of 15 death penalty defense

Notable Recent Publications, December 2023

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. Should you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to albdavies@smu.edu . Videos Public Defense and Public Defenders in Latin America and the United States. Webinar co-hosted by the Indigent Defense Research Association, Rutgers University, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, the University of California at Irvine, and Universidad Autonoma do Barcelona. Articles  Ashlee Beazley, Take (What They Say) With a Pinch of Salt: Engaging in Empirical Research to Understand the Parameters of the ‘Quality’ in ‘Poor-Quality Defence Lawyering’   2022, 2/1, Journal of Legal Research Methodology , 75-99. [This study] seeks to construct a theoretical framework by which poor-quality (insufficient) defence representation may be identified, understood, contextualised, addressed and remedied. To this end, the e

Notable Recent Publications, November 2023

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. Should you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to albdavies@smu.edu . Articles Ronald Burns, Brie Diamond & Kendra N. Bowen, "Does type of counsel matter? A Comparison of outcomes in cases involving retained- and assigned counsel." Journal of Crime and Justice. Existing research yields inconsistent results with regard to differences among type of counsel in criminal cases. Studies in the area generally compare the effectiveness of indigent versus retained counsel, and public defenders versus assigned counsel, and focus on broad categories of crime. The present work expands this literature through comparing case outcomes between assigned and retained counsel in the processing of criminal trespassing cases. It also contributes through measuring type of counsel in relation to the imp

Notable Recent Publications, October 2023

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. Should you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to albdavies@smu.edu . Articles Roni Factor, Dana Kariti, Hagit Lernau & Danielle Yaffe Ayubi, Videoconferencing in Legal Hearings and Procedural Justice . Victims and Offenders. The use of videoconferencing (VC) technology in legal hearings has been expanding recently. However, the effects of using VC in court hearings on different elements of procedural justice have not yet been widely investigated. Systematic observations conducted in 370 extension-of-detention hearings were used to compare the court settings and dimensions of procedural justice between hearings where the detainee was present in person vs. through VC. Multivariate regression analysis indicates that the voice, respect, and neutrality elements of procedural justice are signif

Notable Recent Publications, September 2023

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. Should you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to albdavies@smu.edu . Webinar Blount-Hill, Kwan Lamar. Inclusive Criminology . Joint presentation by the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center and IDRA. Articles Alex Cholas-Wood, Madison Coots, Joe Nudell, Julia Nyarko, Emma Brunskill, Todd Rogers & Sharad Goel, Automated Reminders Reduce Incarceration for Missed Court Dates: Evidence from a Text Message Experiment . Millions of Americans must attend mandatory court dates every year. To boost appearance rates, jurisdictions nationwide are increasingly turning to automated reminders, but previous research offers mixed evidence on their effectiveness. In partnership with the Santa Clara County Public Defender Office, we randomly assigned 5,206 public defender clients to either receive au

Notable Recent Publications - August, 2023

Notable Recent Publications features the latest empirical research and data related to indigent defense. Should you have suggestions, ideas for work that should be included, or trouble accessing any of the articles featured, please write to albdavies@smu.edu . Articles Aliya Birnbaum & Emily Haney-Caron, What advice do parents give their children about plea bargains? Understanding the role of parent race, attorney race, and attorney recommendations , Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice , Vol 21/2, pp. 128-155. This study examined parent acquiescence to attorney recommendations in plea bargain decisions, and the effect of racial similarity between an attorney and their juvenile client’s parent. Scholarship indicates that youth are vulnerable to the influence of authority figures in plea-bargaining, leading to a reliance on parental and attorney input for plea decisions. Parents read a vignette with attorney’s race manipulated, imagining they are participating in th