State and local governments spend serious money every year to hire lawyers for criminal defendants who cannot otherwise afford their own attorneys. Like all the other big-ticket items in a public budget, this one is revealing. Funding for this politically unpopular yet necessary government service must go through the legislative appropriations process, year in and year out, producing an instructive case study in crime politics.

Legislators who draft the criminal justice portions of the state budget routinely express the hope that the government can control the expense of indigent criminal defense. One method of doing so involves recovering part of the attorneys' fees from the defendants themselves. Some defendants, although they may qualify for appointed counsel under the state's standards for indigency, still have the financial means to pay for part of their defense, or will be in a position to do so in the future, allowing the state to recoup some of its expenses after the case ends. But these traditional" recoupment" statutes require a great deal of judicial effort to sort the truly indigent from those with more resources, and considerable administrative effort to track defendants over time and collect the monies piecemeal. The disappointing revenues collected under recoupment statutes have led many states, since the early 1990s, to experiment with a different cost-control technique: statutes that instruct courts to assess up-front" application fees," typically in the range of $25 to $100.'The fees are charged automatically to criminal defendants, who, despite their demonstrated poverty, are expected to" pay as they go," often without regard for the outcome of their case. The fees, imposed on the front end of the criminal prosecution process, do not create the same administrative burdens as the more income-sensitive" recoupment" procedures, yet they enjoy many of the same policy and political benefits. As we explain in Part I, they have now spread to over half the states.