One More Check for the Free Market
January 11, 2007
An econometric study of the performance of private versus public defenders (published by the Ohio Sate Journal of Criminal Law) found that private lawyers tend to outperform their public colleagues in terms of getting fewer years of imprisonment for their clients. The report also revealed that marginally indigent people used public defenders when their cases were highly unlikely to result in jail time. But when the charges were serious, they would borrow from friends and family to hire private attorneys, apparently because they believed they would get better representation - and they did. The study was reported on by Morris B. Hoffman writing in The New York Times. Hoffman is a 16-year state trial judge who said that prior to seeing it, he thought public defenders were better than their private counterparts.
posted by M. Masterson @ 9:56 AM,
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