A modest proposal to end the funding crisis for public defenders

Mr. Gillette has convincingly established that Minnesota's system of public defense for indigents is in crisis.  He points out that neither candidate for governor has so much as acknowledged the problem, much less proposed a solution.  Notably, however, Mr. Gillette does not propose a solution either.  Times are hard.  Money is scarce.  Simply hiring more public defenders is not possible.  What can be done?

I have a solution, and it is virtually free:  fewer crimes.  I don't mean that people should commit fewer crimes (although that would be nice).  I mean that there should be fewer crimes.  With fewer crimes, there will naturally be fewer criminals.  And with fewer criminals, the crisis in public defense will disappear.

There are a lot of stupid crimes on the books.  But I've got a couple of categories in mind.  Let's start with drug crimes.  In particular, the simple possession of drugs--any drug--should be decriminalized, subject only to civil forfeiture of the contraband.  We can wait to decriminalize the production and distribution of drugs, and can pick and choose which drugs we want to do that for.  But for now, we should be arresting and prosecuting only drug dealers--not drug users.  Frankly, I think local, county, and state police authorities should entirely cede the field of drug enforcement to the federal government.  That way, only major operations are worth going after.

(As a side note, here's a depressing factoid about the international drug war.  Last year, 6,600 people died from drug-related violence in Mexico.  For comparison, there were 4,674 civilian deaths from violence in Iraq last year, and the US has lost just 4,500 soldiers in the entire Iraq war.   "The drug war" is not a metaphor.)

Prostitution is another obvious candidate for decriminalization.  From my brief experience as a city prosecutor in Minneapolis, I can confidently say that going after hookers and johns is about the biggest waste of government resources that one could possibly imagine.  Another benefit of decriminalizing both drugs and prostitution is that we'd likely have at least one more federal judge going to work on Monday.

Finally, and most controversially, here's one other idea for a class of crimes we should consider getting rid of:  drunk driving.

The Tipping Point: Are We There Yet?

MinnPost.com has two articles about the state of affairs for Minnesota's public defenders. The articles paint a bleak picture. Judge Sharon Hall is quoted as saying that Minnesota courts are "fast becoming the courts of McJustice."

According to MinnPost, Minnesota budgetary woes have led to cutting the number of public defenders. The result is that remaining public defenders now carry twice the caseload recommended by the American Bar Association.

The result of this shortage is twofold. One result is fairly obvious, the other strikes me as very weird. I will start with the weird one.