Talk:Public defender (United States)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kriidztofer. Peer reviewers: Kriidztofer.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:51, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Suggestions/Critique

I personally feel that for the most part that the page is alright in terms of information provided as well as the sources. In areas such as **Legal Issues**, the information provided feels neutral and just providing information. There really isn't any issues here. However, the parts that do have issues, I do have concerns with. First of all, let's talk about the sources and citations. A lot of information here is not cited, information that's not general information. For instance, the article talks about how in Kentucky public defenders have a different title yet never shows readers where this information is from. Other concerns rise from the sources chosen as well. For parts explaining about what the public defender does, the article utilizes a website called superscholar. Taking a quick look at this site, it doesn't seem to be the most reliable site to report on what Public defenders do. I just feel like using sites such as US government court website itself could have provided the same information. I also feel this way in the subsection talking about Pay. The article explains that Public defenders make usually less money. I feel like pay information should be something that is sited as well. This is from 2010 but I feel like further research can allow us to see what Public defenders make on average. Not only that this site appears to be more reliable to websites like superscholar. Another issue with the citation could be seen from the fact that some of the links don't work. Citation 25, the Washington Audio Theater leads to a dead site that says that the domain itself is available for purchase. I have no idea if this was even originally the site the person actually used but if so, this makes me think the information utilized is either unreliable or out of date. Also, this is more for convenience rather than a major issue but there are times when court cases are linked to a webpage and there are times some court cases are not such as CItations 22 and 23 compared to Citations 11 and 12. I feel like because 22 and 23 are linked to a webpage, 11 and 12 should be as well. This shouldn't be hard to find as cases like these are available to the public. Another citation issue is Citations 1 and 9. I feel like some more information should be provided rather than just linking you straight to the website itself. Outside of these citation concerns, the other ones work and appear to be unbiased.

Other concerns arise from the two subsections Notable public defenders and Public defender systems. These two feel out of place and unnecessary. They feel biased thus somewhat ruining the neutrality of the article at hand. For instance, what defines a public defender to be notable? I feel like this is ultimately subjective knowledge as it's impossible to define is someone is truly notable or not. These subsection feels like clutter that's unnecessary. The same goes to **Public defender systems**. After all, Public defender systems are a plethora looking at BJS's report on public defenders just from 2007. I feel like this information is just reliant on the systems listed on Wikipedia rather than actual information. For someone who doesn't know anything, this can be entirely misleading to them as they may think these are the only systems in the United States. Also, if we list down every single Public Defender systems, it feels like useless clutter. Why should every single county and state's public defender systems be listed on this page? The page should mainly be to provide information about Public defenders in the United States in a precise and concise matter rather than clutter up the page.

Outside of these concerns I ultimately feel like this article is in a very good spot. All that needs to be done is cite the information that's not cited, remove the cluttered information, and correct some of the outdated information (such as Citation 25). Otherwise I feel like the page does a good job at presenting information in a fair way. --Kriidztofer (talk) 22:54, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I would like to note that all I did was edit the formatting of the above statement. I noticed that I did not actually Bold some of the text that I meant to bold so I decided to edit that.--Kriidztofer (talk) 08:55, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

I would like to note that a lot of the sources seem to be stuff that's extremely hard to verify. While researching and trying to find sources for all the information listed, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of it seems to be lazy citations. For example, some citations such as Wisconsin being the model has no verifiable evidence I can find. Some information was also misleading according to my research I conducted throughout a couple of weeks.Kriidztofer (talk) 15:37, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't know who to talk to about this, but the private sector pay for lawyers isn't anywhere close to 160k a year. 160k a year is the market rate for a first year associate only for the biggest law firms in the biggest markets. The vast majority of law graduates don't get these jobs and the actual starting salary for 75%+ of private attorneys isn't in 6 figures. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gagliardifsu (talk • contribs) 05:08, 17 April 2017 (UTC)