Massachusetts spent $40 million on a crisis its own law could fix
Summary
A Massachusetts Inspector General investigation found the state's public defender agency, CPCS, has missed a legal mandate to assign 20% of cases to its own staff attorneys for at least a decade. When bar advocates stopped taking new cases in 2025, courts dismissed 1,689 cases and released 213 defendants from custody -- while CPCS told the Supreme Judicial Court its staff attorneys were 'at capacity.' The Legislature responded with $40 million for 320 new staff attorneys and a $20-an-hour bar advocate raise. The OIG's math says simply meeting the existing mandate would have absorbed more than 3,000 additional cases -- enough to have covered the crisis without the new money.
A work stoppage, a legal mechanism, and 1,689 dismissed cases
In May 2025, bar advocates in Middlesex and Suffolk counties stopped accepting new criminal cases⧉ to protest their hourly pay. A Supreme Judicial Court justice activated the "Lavallee protocol," a mechanism that lets courts dismiss cases against defendants left unrepresented for 45 days and release from custody those held without bail for seven. Over the following months, more than 9,000 defendants went without representation. The protocol produced 2,345 hearings, 1,689 dismissed cases, and 213 defendants released from custody -- most of the dismissals have since been refiled by prosecutors, who also moved to detain most of the released defendants.
View data as table
| Lavallee hearings held | 2,345 |
|---|---|
| Cases dismissed | 1,689 |
| Defendants released from custody | 213 |
| Additional cases staff attorneys would have absorbed at the mandated 20% share | 3,000 |
"At capacity" -- but not according to the math
Throughout the crisis, CPCS told the Supreme Judicial Court its staff attorneys were at capacity, in general terms, without disclosing the underlying caseload numbers. The OIG reconstructed those numbers itself⧉ from CPCS's separate internal workload data: had CPCS simply assigned the legally mandated 20% share of cases to its staff attorneys during the stoppage, they would have absorbed more than 3,000 additional cases -- comfortably more than the 1,689 cases that were instead dismissed. The 's report also faults the Supreme Judicial Court itself for not demanding more specific capacity data from CPCS during the crisis, rather than placing responsibility solely on the agency.
The 's own footnotes caveat that this estimate assumes other changes happen alongside it, like new bar advocate fee caps and higher caseloads for CPCS's supervising attorneys -- it isn't a claim that 3,000 cases could simply be handed to staff attorneys with nothing else changing. And CPCS's own 2014 internal workload study recommends lower per-attorney caseloads for quality representation than a raw-hours calculation would suggest (92 cases a year in one district-court unit, versus 143 under raw hours) -- the 's case-reassignment math sits closer to the raw-hours end of that scale, which is part of what CPCS disputes.
The Legislature's answer: more money, same structure
Lawmakers responded to the crisis with a supplemental budget: $40 million for CPCS⧉ to hire 320 new staff attorneys, plus a bar advocate pay raise of $10 an hour in August 2025 and another $10 in August 2026. Combined with other cost growth, CPCS's general appropriation is set to climb from $339 million in fiscal 2025 to a projected $380 million in fiscal 2027 -- about 12% in two years. The found this is Massachusetts's third time responding to a bar advocate work stoppage this way: 2004, 2018, and now 2025 each followed the identical script of stoppage, court intervention, public outcry, then a pay raise and more hiring -- without ever fixing the underlying assignment shortfall.
View data as table
| CPCS general appropriation, FY2025 | 339,000,000 |
|---|---|
| CPCS general appropriation, FY2027 (projected) | 380,000,000 |
The most expensive system, with the lightest caseloads
In a 14-state comparison, the found Massachusetts's indigent-defense system cost $2,752 per new case -- more than any other state, ahead of next-highest Vermont's $2,546. In an 8-state comparison, Massachusetts staff attorneys handled an average of 72 new cases a year, the lowest of any state compared and well below Vermont's roughly 140. Part of the reason: Massachusetts caps how many hours a bar advocate can bill per year (2,000), but unlike most states, sets no cap on what can be billed for any single case -- an oversight gap the says invites high bills on straightforward cases with little scrutiny. CPCS's own internal caseload targets, notably, sit below the 20% legal mandate too: in fiscal 2025, its Public Defender Division needed roughly 1,375 more weighted cases to hit its own internal target, but would have needed roughly 4,389 more to reach the statutory 20% -- a materially higher bar that two other CPCS divisions also missed even in years they beat their own internal targets.
A fight over the data itself
CPCS also resisted the 's own investigation: when auditors requested case docket numbers to analyze assignment patterns, CPCS refused⧉, citing client confidentiality. A Suffolk County judge ordered CPCS to comply in January 2026; CPCS appealed, a fight still pending as this report was released. CPCS separately told bar advocates it would pay them $95 an hour -- the standard Superior Court rate -- to consider joining that fight against its own watchdog. CPCS Chief Counsel Anthony Benedetti publicly called the OIG's findings⧉ "inaccurate and an insult," arguing the report leans too heavily on caseload metrics without accounting for what criminal defense work actually requires.
The takeaway
- The state didn't need new money to prevent the crisis -- it needed compliance with an existing law. The 's own math shows staff attorneys, properly assigned, would have absorbed more cases than were actually dismissed.
- This is the third identical cycle in two decades. 2004, 2018, and 2025 all followed the same pattern -- work stoppage, court intervention, then a pay raise and more hiring, without addressing why staff attorneys never reach their mandated share.
- CPCS disputes the diagnosis, not just the tone. Its Chief Counsel argues the 's caseload-based analysis misses what defense work actually requires -- an argument the report doesn't resolve, since CPCS has also fought to keep the underlying case data from the .
Unlike many state audits, this report contains no CPCS response appendix -- CPCS's defense lives entirely in outside statements, including its interview with the Boston Globe cited in this piece. CPCS has told lawmakers it will send a fuller methodology rebuttal 'in the coming weeks,' which was not yet public as of this piece's publication. The 's finding that mandate compliance would have prevented the crisis is the agency's own retrospective calculation, not a claim that CPCS could costlessly absorb 3,000 more cases with zero effect on attorney workload or case quality -- and CPCS's counterargument, that caseload metrics alone don't capture what adequate defense requires, is a genuine, unresolved dispute grounded in CPCS's own quality-adjusted workload standards, which this piece does not adjudicate. The 'over 3,000' figure is the report's own stated floor for the Public Defender Division specifically during the work-stoppage period; a separate, larger 'over 6,000' figure elsewhere in the report covers all CPCS divisions across the full fiscal year and is not the figure used here.
Sources(2) ▾
- Office of the Inspector General for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, An Analysis of Indigent Defense in Massachusetts (2026-06-10) — A 174-page investigation by the Massachusetts Inspector General, mandated by the Legislature after the 2025 bar advocate work stoppage, examining CPCS's caseload practices, cost structure, and indigency-verification processes. Fetched directly and converted with pdftotext -layout. maoig.gov · original document
- The Boston Globe, Scathing report calls for widespread changes to 'broken' Mass. public defense system (2026-06-10) — Used for CPCS Chief Counsel Anthony Benedetti's public response to the report, which does not appear in the document itself. bostonglobe.com · original document
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Massachusetts's system for providing lawyers to defendants who can't afford one relies on two groups: staff public defenders employed by the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS), and private "bar advocates" paid by the case. State law requires CPCS to assign at least 20% of cases to its own staff attorneys. A Massachusetts Inspector General investigation⧉ found CPCS hasn't hit that mark in at least 10 years -- staff attorneys take under 20% of assignments, bar advocates take the rest.