From City Limits:
At a City Council hearing last week, representatives from both sides of the criminal justice system found something they could agree on: the pay is just not enough.
According to Tina Luongo, attorney-in-charge for criminal practice at the Legal Aid Society, which handles the majority of the city’s indigent defense, the organization is suffering from a crisis of attrition and facing difficulty recruiting new lawyers. The same is true for the District Attorneys’ (DAs) offices throughout the city, said the Bronx and Staten Island DAs and reps from the Queens DA.
These organizations, which are responsible for the bread and butter work of the criminal justice system, identified a common set of problems: their attorneys are consistently saddled with student loan debt from costly law school, the exorbitant costs of housing and, for many, childcare in New York City. Under such financial pressure, they are leaving their poorly paid jobs as assistant district attorneys (ADAs) and public defenders, often for higher salaries at other government legal jobs. Continue reading >>>
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