Indigent Defense, Social Workers and Suicidality in Jail: Evidence from Randomized Clinicians and Instrumental Variables
***Please note that registration closes on 11 May 2021***
Travis county, the seat of Austin Texas, mental health courts manage the large case load of defendants with a mental illness. For those unable to afford their own defense, defendants in this court are assigned to either a public defender or a private indigent defense attorney drawn randomly from a large pool of private indigent defense attorneys. Public defenders are assigned defendants with lower functioning, and as a result, the county allocates two social workers for every one public defender. Private indigent defense attorneys, on the other hand, are paid a nominal fixed fee of $750 which is insufficient to hire a social worker. We estimate the causal effect of public defense on repeat offending and suicidality using a leniency design in which randomized assignment of pre-trial clinicians is an instrument for lawyer assignment. While we find no differences in repeat offending between public and private attorneys, we do find that public defenders reduce suicide attempts by 14% conditional on returning to jail compared to that of private indigent defense attorney.

Register here: forms.office.com/r/kAmjyuScCB
Date: 13 May 2021, 16:00 (Thursday, 3rd week, Trinity 2021)
Venue: Zoom- See below for registration details
Speaker: Scott Cunningham (Baylor)
Organising department: Department of Social Policy and Intervention
Organiser: Dr Mark Fransham (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: communications@spi.ox.ac.uk
Host: Dr Mark Fransham (University of Oxford)
Part of: Modern methods in social policy and intervention research
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://forms.office.com/r/kAmjyuScCB
Booking email: communications@spi.ox.ac.uk
Cost: FREE
Audience: Public
Editor: Lani Fukada