Indigent Defense Data Project
Every year, thousands of Texans face criminal charges without proper legal representation.
The public defenders who serve them are under-resourced, overworked, and systemically unsupported. We gather and visualize data about public defense quality at the county level so the system becomes visible, measurable, and changeable.
Section 01
The State of Public Defense in Texas
Texas's indigent defense system is a patchwork — uneven from county to county, chronically under-resourced, and largely invisible to the public. A handful of statewide statistics make the scale clear.
28%
The percentage of all appointed cases disposed were represented by attorneys who also disposed over 200 cases.
66%
The percentage of Texas counties, representing 11.4 million citizens, do not have any kind of indigent defense institution as of October 2025.
90%+
The percentage of counties that don’t provide defense attorney support at the first bail hearing for adults.
Section 02
The Roots of the Crisis
Every year, over half a million people are arrested in Texas.4 Most are too poor to afford a defense attorney.
Studies of indigent defense (such as the Bexar County “Is Your Lawyer a Lemon?” research)5 consistently find that appointed counsel produces materially worse outcomes than retained counsel.
The outcome is longer jail stays, more convictions, and higher costs to people in their ability to keep their apartment, raise their children, or work a job.6
People accused of crimes may plead guilty and spend weeks, months, or even years in jail before they are released — not because they're dangerous, but because they can't pay bail or afford a private attorney to argue for affordable release options.7
The problem is systemic. Poor rural counties have a harder time affording to build public defender offices. Officials trying to balance public safety and limited budgets often lack reliable data that could help them identify ineffective attorneys.
At the state level, oversight is thin. The Texas Indigent Defense Commission visits just a handful of counties each year8 — assessing all 254 takes decades. Even well-intentioned counties are left without the guidance or tools they need to improve.
By gathering and visualizing data about public defense quality at the county level, we aim to make the system visible, measurable, and ultimately changeable — by government leaders, advocacy groups, and the public.
Section 03
The Human Impact of an Overloaded System
Overloaded attorneys translate directly into worse outcomes for individuals — longer detentions, more plea bargains under pressure, and downstream harms that ripple through families and jobs for years.
One researcher estimates that around 40% of the accused in Texas are represented by someone with an excessive caseload.9 Each year between 2015 and 2023, the number of appointed defense attorneys statewide has decreased — from 6,249 to 4,993 (a 20% drop).10
With fewer attorneys available, pressure mounts to continue assigning large volumes of cases to the same few. Public defender offices can provide a more reliable response, with appropriate caseload limits in place.
Fewer than 5–10% of counties in Texas provide counsel at a person's first appearance, where bail is set.6
For thousands of Texans, a misdemeanor charge doesn't end in court — but simply going through the process reverberates through work, housing, and debt for years.
Texas counties spent about $13 per capita on indigent defense in 2023 — $7 less per person than the national average ($20).11
Lack of funding is a large driver of high caseloads. National standards recommend between 7–59 felonies or 93–150 misdemeanors of work per year per attorney;12 in 2023, about half of cases disposed in Texas were appointed to attorneys who disposed 200 or more cases that year.
Throughout this site we use the term “public defender” to refer to attorneys representing indigent defendants in criminal cases, including both staffed public defender offices and court-appointed counsel.