The constitutional right to counsel is one of the cornerstones of American democracy. But a constitutional right without adequate funding is merely a promise on paper.
After years of chronic underfunding, the Defender Association of Philadelphia has been forced to make painful staffing reductions and reduce services that thousands of Pennsylvanians rely upon every year.
The recent service reductions in Philadelphia should serve as a warning to the commonwealth: if the largest public defender office in Pennsylvania is reducing staffing to critical court programs — despite years of operational improvements, grant funding, and careful financial stewardship — the problem is structural underinvestment…