Messenger: New fellowship could ease public defender shortage in rural Missouri | Tony Messenger

In response, she’s started a program called the Missouri Justice Fellowship, hiring young attorneys to begin or further their careers in the public defender system for two years, with additional training and seminars offered during their two-year commitments.

The idea, which came from the deputy director of the system, Greg Mermelstein, is similar to programs that have been used to recruit teachers and doctors to rural areas in Missouri and elsewhere, offering a two-year commitment and extra training in exchange for an agreement to serve in far-flung parts of the state that often have difficulty recruiting employees.

“It’s hard to find people who want to go into some of our communities. We typically don’t have trouble finding people to come to St. Louis or Kansas City or Springfield, but it’s hard to get people into our Farmington office or our Ava office,” Fox says. “There are things happening in those communities that need to be litigated.”

The issues are common in many jurisdictions but often more pronounced in parts of rural Missouri: abuses of the use of cash bail, over-incarceration and the often dire results that come from quick plea deals sought by prosecutors from defendants stuck in jail on pre-trial holds.