Interview Protocol

Attachment A:

Interview Protocol

Informed Consent

The Urban Institute, the National Association for Public Defense (NAPD), and NORC at the University of Chicago are conducting a pilot study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to administer the Survey of Public Defenders (SPD). For this pilot research, the project team is conducting brief interviews with a select number of public defender offices throughout the country to understand how to best compile an accurate roster and contact information for attorneys employed in each office, and whether providing reimbursement to offices to compile these attorney rosters would reduce the burden of this request. We are gathering this information in preparation for administering the national implementation of the Survey of Public Defenders.

Your office was among the group of offices selected for these interviews, so we’d like to interview you to understand how to best compile a comprehensive roster of attorneys in your office and whether an offer of reimbursement for the time and effort required to assemble this roster would be helpful to reduce the burden of such a request.

The interview should take approximately 15 minutes of your time and will entail you answering a few questions about what would be involved for you/your office to compile a roster of the public defenders that work in your office. Your participation in this interview is completely voluntary, and you may choose not to answer a question or to stop participating at any time. You will not be asked to share any identifying information about the attorneys working in your office during this interview.

With your permission, we’d like to take notes during the interview so that we may document what we learn about attorney roster construction in your jurisdiction and combine it with information obtained from interviews with other offices. The information collected from these interviews will not be shared with anyone outside the project team and will only be used to inform the administration of the national Survey of Public Defenders. Thus, there are minimal risks to your participation in this interview.

We thank you for your participation.

Before we begin, can you confirm that you agree to participate in this interview?

[Interviewer indicate] Yes____ No_____

Last year, your office was selected as a pilot site for the Survey of Public Defenders, which is a project being conducted by NAPD, the Urban Institute and NORC at the University of Chicago. It is funded by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (DOJ). We requested a roster of your attorneys (including basic contact and demographic information), from which we selected a random subset of attorneys to receive our survey. Part of the pilot study of the Survey of Public Defenders is to learn about the ability to collect attorney information from public defender offices This survey should take 15 minutes or less to complete. Thank you!

1. What is your name?

2. What is the best email to reach you at?

3. What is the name of your Agency/Office?

4. What is the total number of staff that work in your office?

4a. What is the total number of lawyers in office?

5. Do you collect and/or report the following information from your employees:

Collect:

• Race

• Ethnicity

• Sex

Report:

• Race

• Ethnicity

• Gender
  
  
  

6. Does the same staff person have access to both basic contact information and any/all collected demographic information? Yes/No

7. Last year, we asked you to provide a list of attorneys in your office, including for each: their name, email, address and phone number. If you collect/have available information about attorney race, ethnicity and gender, we requested that as well. In minutes, how long do you believe this task took (or would take)? [numeric value]

8. What barriers are or were there to providing a comprehensive roster?

1. What steps can we take to make providing a complete roster easier?

9. Does your office have a policy of charging for data requests? Yes/No

9a. If yes, please describe

9b. If yes, what would be an estimate charge for the data requested in Question #7 (e.g. list of attorney names, emails, addresses, and phone numbers)?

9c. If no, can your office accept reimbursements for data requests?

10. Do you know of any other “data export fees” being used in your system, i.e. for transcripts or case filings? Y/N

10a. If yes, what are they? If the rates are different from the judiciary versus a

city agency, please describe all, as best you can.