The Effect of Pre-Arraignment Legal Representation on Criminal Case Outcomes

Johanna Lacoe, Brett Fischer and Steven Raphael

No 31289, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Low-income individuals arrested on criminal charges face disproportionately high rates of pretrial detention and conviction. We study a novel approach to addressing this inequity: providing low-income individuals with access to legal counsel immediately following their arrest. Focusing on a pilot program in a large urban county, we estimate the causal impact of early representation by a public defender on release and case outcomes, leveraging quasi-random variation in access to counsel pre-arraignment. Low-income individuals who met with a public defender shortly after arrest were 28 percentage points more likely to be released pretrial, and 36 percent more likely to see their cases dismissed, relative to otherwise similar individuals who would first meet with a public defender at their arraignment. These results suggest that providing timely access to legal representation could improve release and case outcomes for public defender clients.

JEL-codes: K40 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-mfd and nep-ure
Note: LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31289.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31289

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31289

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().