We are the Indigent Defense Research Association. IDRA rhymes with Hydra, to connote an entity that is many-headed, fierce, and hard to kill. We are a virtual, interdisciplinary community of practitioners, researchers, funders, and policy analysts who care about using data to improve public defense. IDRA has a listserv, monthly conference calls on a wide variety of topics, and an annual gathering as a subcomponent of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) conference. The listserv has over 240 diverse subscribers including practicing defenders, researchers in academia and government, business people, consultants, and others. People commonly post questions, distribute materials of interest, and engage in debate. Our members drive the agenda of our monthly conference calls and webinars. Past topics have ranged from the use of new technology to improve public defense to issues involving data capacity in the field to ethical issues raised by empirical research on public defense.
A virtual, interdisciplinary community of practitioners, researchers, funders, and policy analysts who care about using data to improve public defense.