How a Lack of Access to Lawyers Sets the Poor Up for Failure

James Forman, Jr., Law Professor at Yale University: When you go into poor communities and you ask people is there such thing as equal justice under law, people will laugh. Law provides equality, an equal shot, for anybody. That’s the aspiration of the justice system. The reality is unfortunately very different.

If you are charged with a crime in this country and you are too poor to afford a lawyer, the government has to provide you a lawyer. The question is, what’s the content of that right? Is it a lawyer that has time? Is it a lawyer that’s paid a fair wage? The problem is most public defenders have caseloads that are much too high.

You get what we call “Meet ‘Em and Plead ‘Em” lawyers. The only thing they have time to do is to explain to you, briefly solicit, “Here’s the plea offer from the government. I think you should take it.” They don’t have time to do anything else. And then you stand up and plead guilty. Nobody’s ever stopping and taking the time to explain to you what’s happening.

It’s really toxic to a society to have a substantial part of the population that feels like the system is so stacked against it. And also feels like the system is promising fairness and then never delivering on it. I think the long-term consequences of having a legal system that isn’t equal is that people lose faith in the system. If you look at the history of our country, we can point to profound, manifest, deep-seated injustices.

Slavery

Jim Crow

Marriage Ban

There was a moment when people said, “That will never change. That’s been true forever!” And then people mobilized. People marched. People got educated. People can make change happen. And I feel like that moment is now in our criminal justice system. We have an opportunity to change it.