Budget cuts and chronic underfunding have plagued the criminal justice system and been particularly harsh on services for indigent criminal defendants. A new anaylysis found that  Pennsylvania is  defaulting on the Sixth Amendment. On December 8, 2011, Pennsylvania’s Joint State Government Commission issued its report, A Constitutional Default:

Services to Indigent Criminal Defendants in Pennsylvania, concluding that public defense providers labor “under an obsolete, purely localized system,” and that the structure of services “impedes efforts to represent clients effectively.” The report mentions several concerns, including the fact that many of Pennsylvania’s counties are so burdened with excessive caseloads that public defenders are effectively prohibited from providing indigent defendants with adequate representation. And Pennsylvania is not alone. Public Defender’s offices in states such as Tennessee, and Missouri have filed suit against their state governments because their caseloads have become so overwhelmingly large. In August a similar critical report was issued analyzing the Utah system for providing lawyers from indigent defendants. Neither Utah nor Pennslvanis provide any state funding for indigent defendants and rely exclusively on local funding.