Legal Deserts and Spatial Injustice: A Study of Criminal Legal Systems in Rural Washington

From the abstract:

“This Essay draws on empirical research to compose a sketch of the criminal legal systems of several sparsely populated counties in central and eastern Washington State. The study reveals how, at times, the dearth of attorneys available to do the work of prosecuting and defending criminal cases is subjecting system-involved individuals to delays and leaving them vulnerable to ineffective assistance of counsel. Another stressor is the overwhelming reliance on county governments to fund indigent defense, along with substantial portions of the prosecutorial and judicial functions. Rural counties, with typically weak and undiversified tax bases, are often less able to absorb the rising costs of running their justice systems. These factors result in spatial inequalities and injustices, as manifest in significant and concerning variations in how different counties’ systems work.”