, OPD" online).
To carry out these numerous responsibilities, the OPD is headed by Carey Haughwout, who was elected to her first four-year term in January 2001 ("Formation, OPD" online). Ms. Haughwout oversees a staff of more than 100 attorneys and 100 paralegals, investigators, social workers, secretaries and other administrative support staff. Her office has a budget of approximately $15 million annually and handles more than 50,000 cases per year ("Formation, OPD" online).
The most critical element of the Palm Beach OPD, in fact any public defender's office, is its ability to provide complete and competent legal services to indigent defendants. The office is responsible for providing a legal defense in court to people who are charged with offenses that could result in jail time. Therefore, the OPD's work relates directly to one of every Americans' most fundamental rights: the right to liberty.
Nonetheless, many public defenders' offices must constantly struggle to maintain their already-too-low budgets against political attacks by tough-on-crime groups and victims' rights groups. For example, the state of Arizona amended its constitution in 1990 to add a Victims' Bill of Rights (Scott 249). The importance of such an amendment is to demonstrate a growing political culture that believes too much emphasis has been placed on criminals' rights as opposed to victims' rights. This is important for public defenders' offices around the country because it demonstrates the social and political atmosphere in which these attorneys must defend some of the most despised people in the country.
The political atmosphere is significant to the Palm Beach OPD in particular because it is f
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