A $10 million investment is a bold first step, but Pa.’s public defenders need more

Earlier this month, Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed an investment of $10 million to bolster public defense in Pennsylvania. As the only state that currently does not provide a single dollar of state funding for criminal defense services for people who cannot afford to pay for their own lawyer, there’s no denying that this proposed investment is long overdue for the commonwealth.

Public defenders are among the best-situated resources available to people in crisis. We are upstream in the legal system, able to help someone in crisis with total confidentiality and zero judgment. Our purpose is to empower and lift up our clients, rather than to strip them of liberty and subject them to harm.

With the proper funding, we can be a key piece of infrastructure, supporting not just equal rights under law and the fair administration of justice, but also health, safety, equity, and opportunity for our community. The governor has, it seems, seen our value.

But as a career public defender and now the chief defender of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, I have to temper my joy at this investment with some realism. The disparity between what Pennsylvania’s defenders need and what we may receive — even with this investment — is cavernous.

Most defender offices in our state have no access to much-needed training to ensure cutting-edge practice or enough money to hire crucial staff such as investigators and social workers. These are not minor gaps. Investigators, for example, are essential to the effectiveness of counsel, a foundational safeguard against wrongful convictions. Social workers are not a luxury in defense; they play a key role in connecting defender clients to needed services like substance use or mental health treatment, food assistance, shelter, and more.

Given our history of receiving zero dollars in state funding, $10 million feels substantial and is certainly a step in the right direction. We applaud Gov. Shapiro for this gesture. But defenders across the state stand as the only champions of individual Pennsylvanians against a very well-financed police, prosecution, and prison apparatus.

The Defender Association’s operating budget alone is over $54 million, 90% of which comes from the city of Philadelphia. The $10 million in proposed state funding coincidentally matches our office’s requested budget increase for 2023. This amount is just enough to expand our child advocacy unit and hire additional social service professionals for our younger clients. Clearly, it’s not enough to properly fund the 67 public defender offices that will be splitting these resources.

For comparison, right next door in Ohio, the state government spent roughly $200 million per year on indigent defense in 2021. San Jose, Calif., a city that is about two-thirds the size of Philadelphia, earmarked over $70 million for public defense in 2020. (Of course, that’s still less than half of the local prosecutor’s budget.)

Research on what really promotes public safety suggests that churning people again and again through American jails simply exacerbates their underlying struggles and can actually cause more crime. It’s baffling that, for decades, our system’s “punishment model” is still the default in this country, even though we know that programs and services that address the drivers of crime and restore families are more likely to achieve what the public wants from its elected officials: to keep us all safe.

Public defense is not some niche service. Though few people realize it, about half of American families have had a loved one who has been incarcerated, and over 80% of defendants in large state courts were represented by public defenders. That means about one out of every three people you meet may have had a loved one whose last best hope of coming home was a public defender.

Let’s get those families the resources they need to have their loved ones home, safe, and thriving. We recently celebrated the 60th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, the U.S. Supreme Court case guaranteeing the right to counsel to people too poor to afford one, and now budget decisions loom on the horizon. Let’s make the bold and long-overdue decision to fully fund public defense.

Keisha Hudson is the chief defender at the Defender Association of Philadelphia. The Defender Association is the largest public defender office in the commonwealth, representing 70% of the people charged with crimes in the city of Philadelphia. @K_Nicole_Hudson