As public defenders, we fight every day to protect the constitutional rights of people who are caught up in our criminal, juvenile, and child welfare courts. Our clients are poor — we are appointed counsel when someone cannot afford to hire their own lawyer. But in Illinois, systemic barriers continue to undermine our ability to provide effective representation. National evaluations and state reports have exposed that the state’s public defense structure is outdated, underfunded, and lacks necessary oversight and accountability.
Illinois was an early leader in public defense. The legislature established public defender’s offices and mandated court-appointed counsel in 1949 — 14 years before Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court case that created the modern right to counsel in the United States. But our laws around public defense have not significantly changed in the intervening 75 years. Today, the longstanding problem of over-incarceration is compounded by the huge increase in digitally recorded audio and video evidence that has completely changed both the courts and our work as defense attorneys.
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