Over the past few weeks, as my fellow District Attorneys and I have begun speaking publicly about the disparity in funding for prosecutors and public defenders in Massachusetts, just about everyone we talk to reacts in the same way: with shock and anger. People get the basic math that my colleagues have just laid out: that we can’t justify spending over $168 million for public defenders to handle 200,000 cases, while we dedicate just $92 million to prosecutors who handle 300,000 cases. These numbers do not reflect the public’s own safety priorities. We need to fix this broken system and restore proper balance.

Let’s be clear, the Committee for Public Counsel Services provides a vital service and an important function. But that should not translate into a blank check for thousands of defense attorneys or an excuse to ignore the fact that our system of providing criminal defense services for indigent defendants is systemically broken.

For 8 straight years, CPCS has failed to live within its budget means – including throughout the period of the state’s economic crisis. This should have set off alarms and triggered corrective action. Instead, CPCS has received tens of millions of additional taxpayer dollars in the form of supplemental budgets. Eight years ago, the Commonwealth dedicated $58 million to CPCS’ indigent criminal defense work, while the DA’s received about $78 million. This funding was roughly proportionate to the actual caseloads.

Today, we’re spending almost twice as much to defend criminals as we do to prosecute them, despite the fact that prosecutors continue to carry a third-more cases. What’s fueling the problem here is two-fold: CPCS unilaterally imposes low caseload limits on its staff attorneys, and they outsource 90% of the cases to private attorneys, known as bar advocates. While there are hourly and annual limits to what these bar advocates can charge, the present system and its existing loopholes do nothing to discourage bar advocates from maximizing their hours and pay.

Our system was not supposed to enrich private attorneys, but in 2005, The Report of the Commission to Study the Provision of Counsel to Indigent Persons in Massachusetts, warned with alarm that this was the direction Massachusetts was headed. Again, this should have set off alarm bells and prompted corrective action. Instead, since the report was issued, the amount of money CPCS spends on bar advocates has doubled, from $78 million to $158 million.

We cannot continue on the current course. CPCS rate of growth is unsustainable, irrational, fundamentally flawed, and wrong. We cannot justify cutting the budgets for DA’s, crime prevention, and other public safety priorities while we continue to pour millions into a broken system that is only enriching thousands of private attorneys.

So today, we are asking the public and our public policy makers one simple question: will you help us to fix this broken system? We are offering a solution that does not ask the Legislature or the taxpayers to allocate one new dollar, but to instead reallocate existing dollars between the DA’s and CPCS based upon our actual caseloads. This proposal would do nothing more than force CPCS to live within its means, as we all should and as we all must; and to operate on a fair and level playing field. We believe that by reallocating existing resources, we can provide sufficient resources for both public prosecution and public defense, and still have millions left over to return to the General Fund or rededicate to crime prevention programs.

For the past three years, the residents of Massachusetts have been told repeatedly that everyone in government is tightening their belts and making sacrifices. But as we’ve demonstrated today, that just isn’t true. While prosecutors and public safety have suffered, criminal defense attorneys have seen their budgets grow exponentially. In fairness to the public we serve, in the interest of efficient and accountable public services, in the interest of fiscal responsibility, and in the interest of public safety, it’s time to fix this broken system.