Agan, Amanda
[VerfasserIn]
;
Owens, Emily
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft];
Freedman, Matthew
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft]National Bureau of Economic Research
Is Your Lawyer a Lemon? Incentives and Selection in the Public Provision of Criminal Defense
Erschienen:
Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2018
Erschienen in:NBER working paper series ; no. w24579
Umfang:
1 Online-Ressource
Sprache:
Englisch
DOI:
10.3386/w24579
Identifikator:
Reproduktionsnotiz:
Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Mode of access: World Wide Web
System requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files
Beschreibung:
Governments in the U.S. must offer free legal services to low-income people accused of crimes. These services are frequently provided by assigned counsel, who handle cases for indigent defendants on a contract basis. Court-assigned attorneys generally garner worse case outcomes than privately retained attorneys. Using detailed court records from one large jurisdiction in Texas, we find that the disparities in outcomes are primarily attributable to case characteristics and within-attorney differences across cases in which they are assigned versus retained. The selection of low-quality lawyers into assigned counsel and endogenous matching in the private market contribute less to the disparities