Happy 2nd Birthday to the SPD!

The Idaho State Public Defender office was born on Oct. 1, 2024 – so our agency is two-years-old today. Happy Birthday to us!

Over the last two years, every member of the SPD – a group of about 330 employees and over 200 contract attorneys – have spent every day making sure public defense in Idaho meets the expectation of the U.S. Constitution.

Our people work to provide holistic representation that meets the highest ethical and professional standards to protect the rights of people who can’t afford an attorney.

We want to recognize our employees and contractors for taking on one of most demanding jobs society has to offer – defending Idaho’s indigent clients in about 80,000 criminal cases a year.

Our first two years were about making sure all cases were covered by the highest quality public defense in all 44 Idaho counties as we transformed a county-based system into a unified state-based system.

It was also about establishing a stable financial structure by working closely with Idaho Gov. Brad Little and the Idaho Legislature to make sure the SPD budget supports our work – and making sure we maximize every penny to support client-based public defense.

The SPD added offices in Jerome, Elmore, Benewah, and Shoshone counties over the last two years, increasing public defense coverage in some of Idaho’s more populated areas while decreasing the pressure on contract attorneys in those communities. We now have institutional offices in 18 of Idaho’s 44 counties.

Now, as we enter year three, we’re building on our progress.

We’re working to create a joint Latah/Nez Perce counties institutional office to increase public defense service for more populated areas of Idaho’s 2^nd District.

We are also working to establish a new Child Protection Act division for the entire state, which we hope will reduce pressure on our Alternate Counsel Division while improving operational consistency and oversight.

Another project for year three is collecting specific workload data from our LegalServer case management system, to develop an Idaho-specific workload standards.

It’s taken some time for attorneys to learn the ins-and-outs of the LegalServer case management system. That was a heavy lift for our staff and contractors, and we are starting to collect useful, case-specific data. We’ll have that information soon.

We continue to work on standard governance, like finding the best employees and refining internal policies to make sure the agency is evolving and improving.

For instance, we have robust legal intern programs in several of our institutional offices and are working on a plan to offer internships for social workers. We’re working closely with the University of Idaho College of Law and other regional law schools to recruit new talent.

The SPD currently has a 7.7% vacancy rate – that is pretty good – but we won’t be satisfied until we have every open attorney position filled.

Our agency is always working on ways to improve, and we are full speed ahead for year three.