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Comment by baron816 | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone ever done a study on the costs/benefits of funding public defenders? Better funded public defenders, I imagine, would result in fewer and shorter prison sentences (saving money), but I guess also have some potential for an increase in crime (costing money).

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I don't think anyone with actual power over the issues wants shorter prison sentences. The public loses money on prisons, but there is an industry of basically sucking profits off all the different things that prisoners do throughout the day, and in also taking a cut for other things like how they broker relationships like which healthcare providers get paid, etc. They take orders-of-magnitude too high profits on moving money, making phone calls, video calls, ordering books and stuff, mailing packages, buying some ramen noodles, privileging someone with an ankle bracelet, or charging rent at a halfway house (they own those too), or just the slave or near-slave labor wages for doing a job, etc. And the states get stuff like free firefighters, as we all know. A privileged minority is gaining all the real estate for the new prisons, offices, halfway houses, too. They want to keep doing what they are doing. And it's not just the private prison industry or anything it's just the whole thing is this bloodsucking.

It is corrupt extraction of human ability and based on suffering, it is just not tracked closely. People do time for the worst things. Using drugs is not a real crime worthy of punishment, for example, but people just sit and sit and work and work for really dumb stuff like that. Justice system seems clearly not some rehabilitative thing where people involved are helping in good faith. That is maybe what they imply on tv crime shows or something.

I don't know about studies, but San Francisco has had an elected public defender's office since 1921. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Public_Defender%... and http://hrlr.law.columbia.edu/hrlr-online/the-publics-defende... An elected office means they can more freely lobby for funding and changes in policy. OTOH, if the office is elected, there's a chance voters might elect a "tough on crime" public defender. https://www.kqed.org/news/11738958/only-sf-elects-its-public... (But see the previous HRLR article, which suggests that public defender office elections are rarely contested, even in moderate or relatively conservative states, which interestingly contain most of the few such offices.)

An elected Public Defender isn't valuable background for other elected positions (unlike an elected D.A.), especially in moderate-to-conservative polities, so the kind of people interested in running for election usually don't want the job, and the kind of people who would want the job won't want for election (unless the election is pro forma because it is uncontested.)

That’s just one variable

If public defenders get better, the canonical theory is that the prosecution will be forced to make stronger cases with better evidence, improving the criminal justice system overall.

However, if the number of falsely accused people weren’t high in the first place, there shouldn’t be a significant drop in convictions if the prosecution cab keep up. If they can’t , then presumably crime rates would increase and there would be public pressure to increase funding for police and prosecution and less funding for public defenders, and then you’d end up where you started

In theory a cheaper reform is not hiring prosecutors who pursue cases with weak evidence, or who don't throw kids in jail for crazy things like taking pictures of each other, or who ask for lower sentences.

The prosecutor has a much bigger influence on outcomes than a public defender.

> but I guess also have some potential for an increase in crime

What? Why?

Public defender might help the innocent stay free. But if you actually did the crime and were caught you're probably still going to jail barring some impropriety being involved.

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