Description
The fundamental right to defense is offered in Jalisco through the Social Attorney's Office. This institution is in charge of offering legal representation in the civil, labor and family area (social representation), and also in the criminal area (public defender office). Here I focus on the latter. Public defense attorneys are in charge of providing access to criminal justice to those individuals that cannot afford to hire a lawyer; thus, they are the channel to justice for the poor.In this chapter, I discuss the conditions under which the PDO in Jalisco operates. The aim of this chapter is to assess the role of the PDO in providing adequate legal defense to the underprivileged accused of committing a crime, as well as to show the challenges that this institution poses, in its current conditions, for the rule of law in Jalisco. For this work, I reviewed legal and academic documents, and conducted 14 interviews with public defenders of the criminal area in this state.
