End Game

There is a reason there aren't posts here very often. It's related to the fact that my effort at building an online community of dependency defense lawyers has failed, I think.

Let's start with this: the J.A.C (the ironically named Justice Administrative Commission) has been demanding hearings and contesting payment for lawyers who have represented so-called "non-offending parents". Never mind that Chapter 39 is quite clear about all parents' entitlement to counsel; never mind that the very notion of non-offending parents was created by case law; never mind the irony that JAC is presenting case law, instead of Chapter 39, in hearings to twist a ruling somewhere that there is no constitutional right to effective counsel in dependency proceedings to mean that there is no constitutional right to counsel at all in dependency proceedings at all. Never mind all of that. What is important is that a governmental agency that goes by the name of "Justice Administrative Commission" spends what seems to be 98% of its time and resources seeing to it that those who seek justice for the indigent have a hell of hard time being paid for doing so, despite the contract JAC signs with them.

Now consider this: when I was asked by many in my circuit if I would apply for the position of Regional Counsel, I was flattered, but I answered honestly; I could not, with my experience in operating complex organizations and handling budgets and personnel, in good faith apply for a job that I knew simply could not succeed in its mission. I knew, and know, that the Regional Counsel offices simply cannot handle their mandates without at least twice (more likely triple) the budgets given to them. Of course, if their budgets were doubled, they'd be more expensive than the old wheel/rotation system of using private lawyers did, but that doesn't matter anymore because that ship has sailed.

Next consider this: it seemed strange that the Republican legislature of the State of Florida created a governmental solution, instead of a private solution, to the problem of indigent defense costs. Surely there were other options. I had plenty of them in my head. Nobody asked me. Nobody asked anyone who is in the trenches as appointed counsel in dependency cases.

As I write this, the nation is torn over fears spread by the republican President, the democrat Congress, and on down, that only the government can save us from a credit crisis created by...wait for it...the policies of past presidents and Congress. There is a link here, I think, or at least a fear of a link.

What if the whole point of the recent changes in Florida is to get rid of the notion of court-appointed attorneys for the indigent in dependency cases? What if that is the desired result? I give you the Cloward-Priven strategy, in which a system is overloaded with demands on it with the purpose of causing it to collapse (remember my response to why I wouldn't in good conscience apply for Regional Counsel) to the point that the system collapses and the public clamors for reform...in this case that reform being that indigent parents in dependency cases are not entitled to counsel.

I have come to believe that that is the end game. Put together all of the above, underscored by JAC's position in its various hearings about fees, along with the very predictable failure of the Regional Counsel offices, together with the fact that in at least one Florida jurisdiction, the Public Defender is no longer required to take certain cases, with other jurisdictions looking to grab on to this notion, all leading to a collapse of the Regional Counsels, and.....and....

The only thing that will make fiscal and legal sense after all of that is for Florida's appellate courts to back off and say that the indigent in dependency cases are not entitled to counsel at all, despite what the legislature said in Chapter 39.

And then the cost of an unfettered DCF and unlimited costs incurred by foster care without any watchdogs will come to roost. I started DependencyDefense.com with the notion that those costs and consequences were the whole point. I'm beginning to wonder if I was wrong. Costs and consequences be damned, I now seriously wonder if the Cloward-Priven strategy might not be in full effect, and the whole point of this is simply to create near-absolute power of government over any family who might be subjected to an anonymous phone call to the government. That it was a Republican legislature and a Republican Governor who gave us this is a little baffling, but less so every day that I see the plan to squeeze out competent lawyers for indigent parents come to fruition.