When states charge for public defenders, poor defendants are doomed | Chandra Bozelko | Comment is free | The Guardian

"But the creeping trend toward requiring indigent defendants in the US legal system to pay for public defenders proves that recidivism starts before any defendants even hit a correctional facility – and that it springs directly from the process that was designed to defend them. They receive substandard representation that essentially guarantees convictions and incarceration. They are saddled with the bills for this representation and incarceration and then it becomes a crime not to pay them."