Luzerne County Assistant Public Defender Cheryl Sobeski-Reedy, at left, is photographed at the press event in the capital building with Clinton County Commissioner Jeff Synder, immediate past president of the County Commissioners’ Association of Pennsylvania.
Submitted photo
The Luzerne County Public Defender’s Office was recently invited to attend a press conference at the Pennsylvania Capitol Building on March 26 in support of more state funding for indigent defense across the Commonwealth.
County staff were joined by state legislators, chief public defenders from multiple counties, attorneys from the ACLU-Pennsylvania, the Public Defender Association of PA’s executive director, court-appointed defense attorneys and conflict counsel and the immediate past president of the County Commissioners’ Association of Pennsylvania.
According to a Tuesday county release:
Public defenders perform a critical constitutional function: protecting people’s liberty and providing effective and competent legal representation to all youth facing delinquency proceedings and the indigent encountering criminal prosecution.
Public defenders across the Commonwealth work tirelessly to serve their clients and communities, yet they do so under immense strain as they face high caseloads, limited resources and inadequate compensation.
Although public defense is state-mandated, Pennsylvania places the primary financial burden of indigent defense on its counties. Until the recent allocation of $7.5 million in indigent defense funding in 2024 by state Gov. Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania was one of only two states that did not provide any state funding for public defenders, despite passing the Public Defender Act in 1968.
Under the Public Defender Act, the Commonwealth delegates funding and oversight of indigent criminal defense to each of the state’s 67 counties, resulting in indigent funding varying dramatically by county.
Currently, the Commonwealth funds 5% of total indigent defense spending statewide, forcing counties to shoulder the remaining 95% of indigent costs.
According to a report released by the PA Legislature Budget and Finance Committee in 2021, the average per-capita spending on indigent defense in Pennsylvania was $7.20. With the recent 2024 appropriation factored in, the average became $10.25, which is still well below the near $20 per-capita spending national average, as estimated by the Sixth Amendment Center.
The PA Legislature, in reaction to the juvenile justice scandal that occurred in Luzerne County over a decade ago, deemed that all youth are presumed indigent and entitled to free legal representation by a public defender, but it has yet to dedicate a funding stream directly for attorneys of children facing delinquency proceedings.
Speakers and supporters at the recent press conference in Harrisburg called upon the state legislature to not only continue funding indigent defense in this year’s state budget but also to double last year’s funds.
Underfunding indigent defense harms youth and indigent clients needing help, forces crime victims to wait longer than necessary for case resolutions, increases prison spending due to incarceration that are longer than necessary and adds to backlogs in court systems.
For example, the average cost to keep an incarcerated person in the state is estimated at over $40,000 a year. Underfunding public defense by the state deprives counties of resources necessary to hire, fairly compensate, and retain qualified attorneys and staff and also diverts funds that counties can use for other local, pressing needs.
