The facts are grim all over the state.

Ten people in Douglas County have been arraigned and now sit in jail, but haven’t been assigned public defenders.

Judges in Multnomah County have dismissed more than 100 misdemeanor cases since February.

Child dependency proceedings in Jackson County have effectively ground to a halt, the cases of 64 people on hold.

And the problem is set to compound in Deschutes County, where reduced pandemic restrictions herald an influx of hundreds of cases in the next few months.

The cause of each is no secret: a lack of public defenders.

Though not limited to Oregon by a long stretch, the state is among the hardest hit by the problem. Earlier this month, a majority of Oregon’s public defense providers refused to sign their latest contract with the state, citing workloads so extreme they risked violating their professional ethics by taking new cases. Concessions were made to win over holdouts, and officials are meeting regularly to address the issue of unrepresented inmates. The lack of public defenders has exposed larger issues in the justice system, which looks ripe for another tough fiscal year ahead.

In his pitch to prospective hires, Erik Swallow leans into the idea his office is essentially a training ground for larger and better-paying firms. The director of Umpqua Valley Public Defenders in Roseburg stresses the area’s natural amenities: small-town friendliness and the opportunity to be a big fish in a small pond.

The office has been rocked by vacancies since the Oregon justice system erased its pandemic-related backlog earlier this year, the result of retirements and younger lawyers leaving to work at state agencies and firms in more urban areas.

To help explain why 10 people now sit unrepresented in the local jail, Swallow provided a rundown of his recent staff departures to the board that oversees public defense contracting in Oregon, the Public Defense Services Commission, at a recent board meeting.

Despite spending $3,000 a month on recruiting in national publications, the Umpqua Valley office has received just one application for one of three open positions over the past six months. Now, the office no longer takes new minor felony cases.

“There are tons of openings for lawyers right now, and almost everything pays better than public defense,” Swallow told The Bulletin. “And for the people who have stuck around, it’s getting harder for them to find reasons to stay.”

Oregon is short around 1,300 public defenders, or two-thirds the number it has now, according to a January report by the American Bar Association. Given current workloads, the study found there literally aren’t enough hours in a day for Oregon public defenders to give each case the time it deserves.

There are thought to be a number of causes behind the public defense crisis: Fewer people going to law school. Fewer law grads entering public defense. The region’s young people leave the area after high school, and the persistent difficulty recruiting young people away from urban areas.

Rural public defense offices, down bodies when COVID-19 hit, got by during the court slowdown from 2020-2022. They’ve found their current staffing levels are inadequate to meet demand created by the justice system. This has led to where the state is now: 39 inmates statewide without representation and 65 out-of-custody defendants, as of last week.

When COVID-19 hit, to limit jail population for social distancing, Deschutes County judges set aside signed arrest warrants in less-serious cases. But police have now started arresting people based on those warrants and hundreds of new cases are expected to hit the docket.

“It couldn’t be happening at a better time, right?” said T.J. Spear, administrator of the public public defense consortium Bend Attorney Group.

Bend Attorney Group, whose lawyers work both public defense and privately retained work, signed a contract with the state after holding out for several weeks. Also hurting for talent, the group has tried luring lawyers away from the nonprofit Deschutes Defenders, whose lawyers work only public defense.

But Deschutes Defenders boasts one selling point to job seekers that other defense firms do not. A federal student loan forgiveness program kicks in after 10 years for lawyers working in nonprofit public defense or for a district attorney’s office.

The nonprofit firm’s board voted last year to increase salaries to help stem the tide of resignations, according to firm director Joel Wirtz.

“We knew it would put our budget in the red but hoped that (the Office of Public Defense Services) would fund adequate salaries with the new contract starting in July,” he said.

That didn’t happen. Without additional funding, the nonprofit will be dipping into reserve funds.

The starting salary at Deschutes Defenders is now $78,000, more than the firm has ever offered to new hires. Still, it’s less than the lowest step of the salary scale at the Deschutes County District Attorney’s office, which is just under $94,000 per year. And it’s a far cry from $119,000 per year, or, the average for a lawyer in Deschutes County, a figure still lower than the statewide average for a lawyer of $144,000 per year.

Deschutes Defenders has gone several months without an application and, without additional funding, the firm expects to operate in the red for the next twelve months. “Our current contract does not reflect the current economic reality,” Wirtz said.

The criminal justice system writ large is said to be looking increasingly less attractive to lawyers. In Douglas County, only three people ran for two open judgeships in the most recent election. Last week, the Deschutes County District Attorney’s office had received just three applications for two open deputy district attorney positions.

Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel said when he took office in 2015, 80 applications for an open prosecutor job was the norm. That number has sunk steadily, and rapidly, since then.

“I’ve never seen it so difficult to recruit,” he said.

Prosecutors and public defenders have different roles in the justice system, and public defenders would tell you theirs is more personal. For one, district attorneys have control over their cases, aka, prosecutorial discretion. They can choose to fight hard all the way to trial on some cases, and offer generous plea deals in others they don’t wish to try.

“At my office, we take every case that comes through the door,” Hummel said. “If tomorrow, 20,000 new cases came in the door, we’d take them all. We might have to go from working 10 hours on a case, to two minutes, or 10 seconds. The obvious problem is, the more cases you give us, the lower the quality of work we produce.”

Public defenders, on the other hand, are ethically required to provide clients “constitutionally adequate representation,” which means taking several specific steps with each case. Defense attorneys must conduct their own independent investigation, to include interviews of potential new witnesses. They must review all discovery documents and body camera footage and meet with their clients, usually more than once. All this takes time.

Stacey Lowe, director of Southwestern Oregon Public Defender Services in Coos Bay, thinks an overlooked aspect of the public defense crisis is that her work is looked down on by society, clients included. She says this is evident in the way judges sometimes treat public defenders compared to retained lawyers, allowing public defenders less time to prepare for trial.

“The bottom line is public defenders have gotten a bad wrap for a lot of years,” Lowe said. “Low pay, incredibly difficult work and in incredibly stressful situations. It was not sustainable, and now we’re finally seeing the truth in that.”

Hummel and his counterparts on defense agree the hiring crisis in Bend starts and ends with housing. Despite world-class natural amenities and friendly small-town vibes, the wages paid here equal a housing burden for workers up and down the pay scale, according to regional economist Damon Runberg.

“We’re hearing the same stories with St. Charles and the health occupations, especially ones that pay pretty well,” he said. “An average person might hear that a doctor earning $180,000 a year says it’s too expensive here and think that’s insane. There are people who live on far less than that. But it comes down to your expectations of housing with the income that you’re making.”

Bend’s housing costs are now exceeded on the West Coast by only three places, Runberg said: Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco. Portland no longer tops Bend in cost of housing.

The average monthly mortgage for a new home in Deschutes County is around $3,000, which, for new prosecutors at the district attorney’s office earning around $94,000 per year, works out to 40% of their income before taxes.

“And that’s for an average house in the county, not a place in Tetherow,” Runberg said. “I would think a lawyer earning $90,000 would want to buy an average house and not be housing-burdened.”

Runberg said given these economic constraints, it’s unsurprising that professionals gravitate away from the worst-paying specializations in their field.

“If people have a choice, they’re going to gravitate toward the things that make more money. It’s just a natural tendency,” Runberg said. “So it would make sense that if there’s a shortage, it’s in the type of law practice that’s the least profitable.”