HAYS COUNTY, Texas — Civic leaders in Hays County are in the final steps of getting a public defender’s office, a major victory for social justice groups like Mano Amiga which has been advocating for such an office for the past three years.
The county will select a vendor to fulfill this role on May 24.
Currently, local defense attorneys take turns representing people in need of a lawyer. The public defender’s office would not only supply lawyers but create many other resources.
“So, you have teams of people working on a single case,” explained Eric Martinez, the policy director for Mano Amiga. “You have investigators, social workers, advocates to be able to connect them with resources. So public defenders in general do a much better job than private assigned counsel.”
The Hays County Jail has been facing overcrowding issues, and the latest numbers from the Hays County Jail dashboard created by the Vera Institute of Justice shows that 79% of people in the jail have not gone to trial yet.
“These are legally innocent individuals who've been charged, but not convicted, of a crime for which they're accused. And they're simply there because they are too poor to afford bail,” said Martinez.
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This is a problem that some Hays County commissioners, like Debbie Ingalsbe, hope can be helped by a public defender’s office. She and Commissioner Lon Shell have been two of the commissioners who have taken a lead on this effort. She said that, today and tomorrow ,judges are doing interviews with the two groups looking to fulfill the role of a public defender’s office, which she said is needed.
“So many of these individuals may need different resources,” said Commissioner Ingalsbe. “And so we want to make sure that we're providing them those resources to be successful, so they won't come back into the system.”
She believes having a public defender’s office will allow cases to get processed more quickly, helping to keep people from staying in jail longer than needed. As of October of last year, nearly half the people in the Hays County Jail were Latino men, making up 45% of the jail population.
“That’s the population that we see most of the time that can't afford to make bail. And so, yes, we're very hopeful that that will absolutely help the situation,” said Ingalsbe.
Both Commissioner Ingalsbe and Eric Martinez said the goal is to create a more holistic criminal justice system.
“All of these factors are really important in being able to build a legal system that is just,” said Martinez.
“Just ensuring that we're keeping these individuals out of the justice system and helping them to be as successful as we can,” said Ingalsbe.
Once a vendor is selected on May 24, Mano Amiga said it will take about one to two months for contract negotiations and another six months before the office will be able to take on cases.
The public defender’s office is being funded by five million dollars from the American Rescue Plan.
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