Idleness as work? How public defenders do their job by waiting
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- dc.contributor.author Ang, Milena
- dc.date.accessioned 2025-10-06T06:21:18Z
- dc.date.available 2025-10-06T06:21:18Z
- dc.date.issued 2023
- dc.description.abstract How can public defenders provide adequate legal representation when they are underbudgeted and overworked? Mexican public defenders represent 75-90% of those facing a judicial process (either through the entire process or at some points of it) and receive around one tenth of the budget allocated for their counterparts, prosecutors or fiscalías. Drawing from fieldwork conducted in Oaxaca city, Mexicali, and Tijuana, I find that the public defenders spend a considerable amount of time waiting: waiting in the office for their next case to be assigned, waiting to receive a file, or waiting for the judge to show up in court. Although superficially this waiting can be interpreted as idleness, I identify three ways in which defenders do their jobs during their down-time. First, they interchange key information about specific cases with other operators of the system and families and acquaintances of the accused, thus building legal strategies. Second, down time allows them to socialize with agents of the fiscalía, cops, and other courthouse workers, a crucial activity for the establishment of cordial interagency relations. Finally, they also use this down time to do what I call “forced encroachment,” meaning the undertaking of activities—such as professionalization of legal translators—that are not necessarily their responsibility but that are nevertheless crucial for the jobs. Waiting, in a way, allows public defenders to provide a legal defense in the absence of time and money to investigate, thus keeping the criminal justice system running.en
- dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
- dc.identifier.citation Ang M. Idleness as work? How public defenders do their job by waiting. Crime Law Soc Change. 2023 Jul;79(5):483-503. DOI: 10.1007/s10611-023-10079-w
- dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10611-023-10079-w
- dc.identifier.issn 1573-0751
- dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/71378
- dc.language.iso eng
- dc.publisher Springer
- dc.relation.ispartof Crime, Law and Social Change. 2023 Jul;79(5):483-503
- dc.rights This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
- dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- dc.subject.keyword Public defenseen
- dc.subject.keyword Mexicoen
- dc.subject.keyword Criminal justiceen
- dc.subject.keyword Bureaucraciesen
- dc.subject.keyword Waitingen
- dc.title Idleness as work? How public defenders do their job by waitingen
- dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
- dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion