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Arkansas district courts serve as the first—and often only—point of contact many residents have with the criminal justice system. These high-volume courts make critical decisions about pre-trial detention, bail amounts, court services, the appointment of counsel, as well as fines, fees, and other criminal justice debt. Despite their importance, reliable data about district courts is limited due to a lack of verbatim records.

The Court Observation Arkansas (COAR) project draws on two original studies to fill this gap, examining how public defender shortages, high caseloads, interpreter scarcity, and inconsistent courtroom procedures shape people’s experiences. Using law student observations of over 10,000 cases in 14 Arkansas counties and interviews with 25 district court judges, the research provides a detailed, inside look at the daily workings of these courts.

Professor Anastasia Boles and Program Assistant Eliza Buckner will offer insights into the structural conditions that affect fairness, access, and the protection of rights in Arkansas district courts. They will also introduce the conceptual framework of ‘justice infrastructure’ as a way to map the effects of regional variance on defendants and the justice system as a whole.

Public confidence in the criminal courts often rests on the belief that the system reliably delivers truth and justice. But what if the reality is far more complicated? Attorney and former public defender Emily Galvin-Almanza draws on years of frontline experience to reveal how a system intended to protect can instead perpetuate harm, inequality, and instability.

The Price of Mercy uses first-hand accounts and compelling storytelling to expose what happens behind the closed doors of America’s criminal courts. Galvin-Almanza examines how cash bail policies, strained public defense systems, and flawed forensic practices can lead to wrongful convictions and cycles of incarceration. At the same time, she highlights solutions that work, showing how strong public defense and community investments can improve safety, health, and economic outcomes.

The Price of Mercy challenges readers to reconsider how justice is delivered and what true reform requires. Galvin-Almanza argues that meaningful change will take an informed and engaged public committed to building a system rooted not in punishment alone, but in fairness, accountability, and mercy.

The constitutional right to counsel means little when people accused of crimes linger in jail for weeks, months, and even years without legal representation. Yet, these delays have become systemic features of indigent defense, prompting courts to intervene.

In this Deason Center workshop, Professor Eve Primus will explore a growing body of state court decisions declaring appointment delays unconstitutional and imposing remedies ranging from defendant release to structural reform. Her research will examine the root causes of delayed appointments of counsel, the constitutional framework governing when representation must begin, and emerging litigation strategies aimed at delivering immediate relief while driving durable, systemwide reform.

Across the nation’s rural legal deserts, there is a dire shortage of public defense providers. In some places, rural defenders labor under excessive workloads. Elsewhere, arrested people languish in jail without a lawyer to defend them.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In this special webinar, the Deason Center team provides actionable insights for policymakers and practitioners to recruit rural public defenders. Join us to learn about pipeline programs, financial incentives, and new practice structures that can green our public defense deserts.

Public defenders provide essential legal representation to people who cannot afford an attorney. Yet, they do so under notoriously heavy caseloads, raising important questions about how workload affects the delivery of justice.

As part of a larger study on public defense, Dr. Amy Mahler analyzed case records from two U.S. states and examined how strict case assignment rules created natural variation in attorney workloads. Her research also incorporated detailed time-use data to better understand how public defenders allocated their limited resources across different tasks.

Dr. Mahler’s research sheds light on the connection between workloads and case outcomes in public defense and explores what these connections mean for ensuring fair and high-quality, effective representation.

On September 18, 2023, Illinois implemented the Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA). This landmark reform eliminated cash bail and introduced sweeping changes to the state’s pretrial system. The PFA establishes new release and detention factors, restricts pretrial detention, and limits post-release modification of release conditions.

Professors David Olson and Don Stemen of Loyola University’s Center for Criminal Justice will share findings from their ongoing, long-term evaluation of the PFA’s implementation. They will also highlight variations in the PFA’s implementation and impact across urban and rural Illinois jurisdictions.

The Deason Center hosts Dr. Kevin Scott, interim director of the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, for a discussion with researchers and practitioners about gathering data in rural court systems. Dr. Scott will be joined by:

• Kristen Staley, Executive Director of the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission
• Christian Mash, State’s Attorney for Garrett County, MD
• Melissa Mackey, Research Director for the New York State Office of Indigent Legal Services

The panel, moderated by Deason Center Research Director Dr. Andrew Davies, will discuss challenges and solutions when gathering data on courts, defense services, and prosecutors in rural jurisdictions.

This event is part of the Deason Center's STAR (Small, Tribal, and Rural) Justice Series. This series seeks to highlight an array of distinctive criminal justice issues affecting small, tribal, and rural areas across the United States.

The over-policing of communities of color has been at the forefront of social and criminal justice reform movements in recent years. The desire to address policing in the U.S. is closely linked to the proliferation of officer-involved shootings of, and physical altercations with, Black men and women. Notably, less attention has been given to the over-prosecution of these groups.

While prosecutors have the ability to divert individuals away from justice system involvement, over-policing of some communities may have indirect effects on the likelihood of prosecution. Merely living in a particular zip code may increase an individual’s chances of criminal justice contact. Given the emphasis on efficiency in case processing, this may lead to compounded disadvantage for defendants, particularly for those from communities experiencing the greatest socioeconomic and structural deficits. 

This study examines the impact of residency on over-prosecution. Specifically, this project identifies sociocultural characteristics of over-prosecuted communities, clarifies offenses most commonly over-prosecuted, and explores whether policies can mitigate these issues, with particular attention given mitigation of non-violent drug and gun possession offenses.

Inclusive criminology (“IC”) emphasizes comprehension through diversity and inclusivity in researchers' subject populations and contexts, theoretical perspectives, research questions, methodological techniques, and practical aims.

In this webinar, Professor Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill explains the IC approach, reviews its growing body of research, and provides examples of its use in theoretical and applied science. He connects IC to larger discourses on demographic and identity diversity and inclusion, including in empirical legal scholarship and indigent defense research. Finally, Professor Blount-Hill introduces epistemic justice as a moral and ethical basis for inclusive criminology.

The Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center and the Indigent Defense Research Association (IDRA) are collaborating to bring this special event.

Presented by Dr. Jennifer Schwartz and Dr. Jennifer Sherman (Washington State University)

Mass incarceration has increasingly become a rural phenomenon. To learn more about the causes and consequences of rural incarceration, the authors conducted a mixed methods study across six counties in rural Washington State. Contrary to local perceptions that jails acted as “revolving doors” for drug addicts and serious felons, quantitative analyses of jail data (2015-2019) showed that a large proportion of jail stays were due to minor offenses like missed court dates, noncompliance with release conditions, unpaid fines, and/or offenses related to driving with a suspended license.

The authors dub this constellation of charges system navigation problems (SNPs), which were responsible for a plurality of pretrial incarcerations and jail re-entries. The authors argue that SNP charges work to criminalize rural poverty and marginality through both financial and non-financial means. This study highlights the importance of place-based dimensions of social inequalities, illustrating how rurality intersects with net-widening legal practices to contribute to jail use and mass incarceration.

In 2019, District Attorney John Creuzot vowed to end the rampant racial disparity in marijuana enforcement. As a result, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office (Dallas DAO) issued policies designed to radically decrease police enforcement of misdemeanor marijuana possession laws. The authors review pre- and post-reform data about the number of marijuana misdemeanor cases that police submitted to the Dallas DAO for prosecution.

The authors conclude that the Dallas DAO’s policies were associated with a significant decrease in the number of marijuana misdemeanors referred by local police. However, those policies were not associated with a similar reduction in the degree of racial disparity among the cases submitted. Indeed, racial disparity in marijuana enforcement actually increased in some places.

Drawing on other research about prosecutorial charging discretion, the authors situate their findings in the context of other progressive prosecution initiatives and offer insights about the conditions necessary for success.

 is an Assistant Professor of Law at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. 

Professor Hill’s teaching and research lie at the intersection of critical race theory and criminal justice policy. His forthcoming publication in the UCLA Law Review specifically examines bail reform and pretrial risk assessment instruments through a critical race lens. Prior to joining OSU Moritz College of Law, Professor Hill was a Law Research Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, where he led a seminar on the racial implications of algorithmic risk assessment.

The Criminal Justice Reform Workshop "Unwarranted Warrants: An Empirical Analysis of the Search and Seizure Process" was hosted by the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center on November 3, 2022. The workshop was presented by Prof. Miguel de Figueiredo, Prof. Dane Thorley, and Prof. Brett Hashimoto.