"Implicit Racial Bias in Public Defender Triage"

The title of this post is the title of this intriguing new piece co-authored by law professor L. Song Richardson and psychology professor Phillip Atiba Goff. The piece is available now via SSRN, and here is the abstract:

Despite the promise of Gideon, providing “the guiding hand of counsel” to indigent defendants remains unmanageable, largely because the nation’s public defender offices are overworked and underfunded.  Faced with overwhelming caseloads and inadequate resources, public defenders must engage in triage, deciding which cases deserve attention and which do not.  Although scholars have recognized the need to develop standards for making these difficult judgments, they have paid little attention to how implicit, i.e., unconscious, biases may affect those decisions.  There is reason to suspect that unconscious biases will influence public defender decisionmaking due to generations of racial stereotypes specific to stigmatized groups and crime.  This Essay urges legal scholars and practitioners to consider how implicit biases may influence the rationing of defense entitlements and suggests ways to safeguard against the effects of these unconscious forces.

A few recent related posts:

• New Brennan Center report on Gideon and indigent defense
• "Race and the Disappointing Right to Counsel"
• "Gideon Skepticism"
• Florida Supreme Court rules local public defenders may withdraw from cases based on excessive caseloads
• "The Right to Counsel: Badly Battered at 50" (at a great moment for hope and change)
• New Sentencing Project report notes recent changing racial make-up of prison populations