The crisis in legally aided criminal defence in Wales: bringing Wales into discussions of England and Wales

Dehaghani, Roxanna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7400-9433 and Newman, Daniel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3735-1026 2021. The crisis in legally aided criminal defence in Wales: bringing Wales into discussions of England and Wales. Legal Studies 41 (2) , pp. 234-251. 10.1017/lst.2020.42

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Abstract

This article explores the impact of cuts and continued fee stagnation on publicly funded criminal defence in England and Wales. In so doing, we take an explicit focus on Wales, which has been neglected in socio-legal scholarship on criminal justice matters. Drawing on 20 interviews with criminal defence lawyers in south Wales, we examine how they have experienced the changes to criminal legal aid in recent years. The lawyers in this study largely considered underfunding as a key political issue, with criminal legal aid identified as an easy target, also highlighting concerns around the impact of underfunding on their practice and how they can work for clients. As such, lawyers queried whether there is a viable future for criminal legal aid. These findings have implications for Wales, and the whole England and Wales jurisdiction, as we will discuss throughout.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Law Cardiff Centre for Crime, Law and Justice (CCLJ)
Subjects:	K Law > KD England and Wales
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
ISSN:	0261-3875
Funders:	British Academy
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 October 2020
Date of Acceptance:	26 September 2020
Last Modified:	06 Nov 2023 23:46
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/135378

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