Stephanie Brooks Holliday, Nicholas M. Pace, Nastassia Reed, Rosemary Li

In 2020, California took steps to address intercounty variation and shortcomings in indigent defense resources through the Indigent Defense Grant Program (IDGP), which provided 9.8 million to public defenders’ offices in small to medium-sized counties. An understanding of the implementation and outcomes of the projects initiated by grantees is critical to identifying ways to improve the effectiveness of indigent defense across the state and achieve the goals of the IDGP. Authors detail how grantees used program funds, what the funds enabled offices to accomplish, and statewide lessons learned from this program and make recommendations for similar future grant programs.

Key Findings

• The most common grant-funded hires were attorneys, law clerks or law students, and administrative assistants.

• Offices used funds for case-support services, including expert witnesses, immigration support, and interpreters.

• Grantees reported making progress toward such goals as increasing knowledge and skills of staff, improving attorney and staff workloads, and providing services related to behavioral health and well-being.

• Challenges that grantees experienced included hiring and retention difficulties, delays outside the control of the offices, and data and technology limitations.

• Grantees cited flexibility in using funds as a feature of the grant program that maximized its impact and suggested increasing the minimum funding allocation

Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2024, 73 pages