The Oregon Public Defense Commission released a plan in June 2025 to significantly reduce the number of unrepresented defendants while focusing on counties with the highest unrepresented numbers and building on current efforts. The multipronged, 12-month proposal outlines strategies to increase the public defense system's capacity to take cases. Actions would facilitate the hiring of newly graduated lawyers, strengthen oversight of contracts, encourage collaboration with public safety partners, and compensate experienced attorneys for voluntarily taking cases beyond their contractual caseload if they have the capacity.
Background
The Constitutions of the United States and Oregon and Oregon statutes require the appointment of competent counsel for those who have been charged with a crime or face other potential or actual deprivations of their liberty interests and cannot afford counsel. The Oregon Public Defense Commission (OPDC) is responsible for maintaining Oregon’s public defense system and ensuring the availability of qualified, competent counsel for all those so entitled.
Even in the best conditions, there are, on any given day, a handful of persons entitled to court-appointed counsel in Oregon who do not currently have counsel appointed. Attorneys who provide defense services routinely have ethical conflicts that prevent them from accepting appointments, and the processes for bringing persons before the court lead to built-in, but relatively small, delays in the system. Typically, a person entitled to counsel is without appointed counsel for, at worst, only a few days as OPDC staff work with the courts and providers to locate counsel qualified and willing to take on representation.
More recently, however, Oregon’s public defense services capacity has experienced challenges in keeping pace with evolving representation needs. This has resulted in increases in the number of persons who do not have the court-appointed counsel to which they are entitled and/or the average number of days in which that circumstance continues.
This page is intended to provide information regarding unrepresented persons and the OPDC’s efforts to increase public defense services capacity to meet representation needs throughout Oregon. If you have questions about the information provided on this page, please email
Unrepresented@opdc.state.or.us.
If you have been charged with a crime and your court paperwork lists OPDC, rather than the name of an attorney, please follow this link for additional information.
Available Data Regarding Unrepresented Persons in Oregon
When a person is brought before the court for their initial hearing, the court will appoint an attorney from a contracted entity if one is available and, if not, may appoint a qualified attorney who provides public defense services at an hourly rate. If no attorneys in the jurisdiction are available, the court will “appoint” OPDC as a placeholder so the person and case will be listed on the OJD dashboard. Information from local jails is used to determine if persons are in custody or out of custody. The dashboard is updated at 8:30 a.m. each business day and reflects data from the prior day.
Unrepresented Monthly Report
In December 2024, OPDC began compiling monthly statistical snapshots of the counties with high numbers of unrepresented individuals. The data come from our agency and the Oregon Judicial Department (OJD). We distribute this document each month to a workgroup that includes legislators as well as representatives from the OJD, Oregon State Bar, Oregon District Attorneys Association, Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, Criminal Justice Commission, and Oregon Defense Consortia Association. The aim is to give them a better understanding of the extent of the problem on a local level, possible contributing factors, and efforts to reduce the numbers.