PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Public Defender system currently employs 49 public defenders but its workload requires a 136-person, full-time-equivalent workforce, according to The Rhode Island Project, a study conducted by Blum, Shapiro & Co. that was released Thursday.
Over a six-month period – October 2015 to April 2016 – BlumShapiro, together with the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, sought to establish “public defender workload standards” for those operating in Rhode Island.
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Utilizing the Delphi method, the researchers relied on the input of “highly informed professionals” as well as data from the six-month period when calculating the amount of time public defenders spend on a single case.
Multiplying the number of hours the Delphi panel believed necessary to complete a case by the number of new cases received by the Rhode Island Public Defender office in 2015, the report found a total 284,259 case hours needed per year.
However, when multiplying the number of hours per case type as determined by the Delphi panel by the average number of new cases received by the Rhode Island Public Defender office between 2011 and 2015 the report found the total necessary case hours per year to be 303,142 – 18,883 hours higher than the Delphi estimate.
By the researcher’s count at its current staffing level the Rhode Island Public Defender office can handle “at most 36 percent” of the Delphi-suggested caseload.
In order to ” provide reasonably effective assistance of counsel pursuant to prevailing professional norms in Rhode Island,” the report said the office would need to hire an additional 87 full-time equivalent attorneys for a total 136.
Additionally, during the six-month observation period researchers found many of the Rhode Island Public Defender office’s current 49 public defenders performing “supervisory and/or administrative” duties which led them to conclude the true number of employees needed to be higher than 87.
While he had not seen the report, Andrew Horwitz, former president of the Rhode Island Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Roger Williams University assistant dean for experiential education, agreed with the findings.
“There is no question the office is terribly understaffed,” he said adding additional funding is what’s needed to address the situation.
The office’s annual budget is enacted each year by the Rhode Island General Assembly. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016, the total approved budget of the RIPD was $11.6 million.
The office, which defends the constitutional rights of those accused of crimes, is often perceived negatively, said Horwitz, it’s “not something [people] feel good about investing public funds in, but they should.”
Funding for the report was provided by the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance.
Emily Gowdey-Backus is a staff writer for PBN. You can follow her on Twitter @FlashGowdey or contact her via email, gowdey-backus@pbn.com.
