My policy research leverages administrative and financial data to investigate how institutions shape both bureaucratic and agent behavior in the criminal justice system. This work has been funded by the Texas Office of Court Administration and the Texas Indigent Defense Commission. In Spring 2019, we will begin an ambitious survey of judge, attorney, and defendant attitudes regarding representation in a major Texas metro.

Other ongoing research involves analysis of attorney caseloads in Texas using data reported to the State Auditor. This working paper introduces the Texas Indigent Defense Attorney Database (TIDAD). In Spring 2019, we will release Version 2.0 of this dataset, which incorporates attorney gender, educational background, and years of practice.