The Lackadasical Defender: management of stigmatized professional life
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2016
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Abstract
The public defender is often represented as incompetent and overburdened, working in
collusion with the government to over-incarcerate, and as morally bankrupt because of
who they defend. Despite being lawyers, and thus professionals, who we would think
would enjoy a level of prestige and high esteem, they are stigmatized because of their
professions. There is not an abundance of literature of public defenders, and that which
exists does not give much attention to the autonomy of public defenders and the
meaningful qualitative analysis that is possible. I describe the stigmatization of public
defenders and possible management techniques for these representations. I discuss
how these representations are managed by analysis of interviews conducted with
current assistant public defenders. The importance of paying more respect to the
management required of public defenders is argued well by sociologist Lisa J. McIntyre,
whose theory I use as a starting point; public defenders legitimize the judicial system
and to achieve this, their legitimization of them through deeper representation is
imperative.