Up or down, there’s no curiosity about the seemingly odd goings-on.
As 2025 comes to a close, the number of criminal cases filed annually in Maine courts continues to decline. It also looks like the number of indigent criminal defense cases handled by the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services (formerly the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services) might finally be declining as a reflection of the smaller number of criminal cases being filed in Maine courts. Then again, maybe not.
As I pointed out in a blog post last December, the number of reported crimes in Maine dropped 40% from 1995 through 2020. It dropped another 8.6% from 2021 through 2023 under the new reporting system instituted in 2021. In tandem with Maine’s sharply declining rate of reported crimes, Maine’s Judicial Branch statistics show that the number of criminal filings in Maine courts declined 30% from fiscal year 2014 through fiscal year 2024, dropping from 55,744 to 38,812. And yet, indigent defense cases handled by the MCILS/MCPDS rose 25% from fiscal year 2014 through fiscal year 2024.
In last December’s blog post, I asked why Maine indigent criminal defense cases rose so sharply while the number of reported crimes and criminal cases filed in Maine courts dropped even more sharply, and whether anyone cared. There we were (here we still are) in the midst of courts unable to assign criminal defense counsel to people constitutionally entitled to them, because the MCILS/MCPDS is overwhelmed by an increasing caseload and can’t find enough attorneys to handle it. Meanwhile, the number of crimes committed in Maine dropped and the number of people charged with crimes dropped along with it. I haven’t yet seen anyone explain the phenomenon, but the total absence of discussion leads me to believe that, in fact, nobody cares. Easy come, easy go, whatever, and all that kind of thing.
In any event, in fiscal year 2025, finally, there was a decline in the number of new criminal cases filed in the MCPDS’s DefenderData system. DefenderData is the system that the lawyers who work on indigent criminal defense cases use to record their hours and submit their bills. According to the June 2025 Operations Report accompanying materials for the MCPDS’s August 6, 2025 Commissioner’s Meeting Packet, new DefenderData cases declined from 31,254 in fiscal year 2024 to 29,414 in fiscal year 2025. That’s a 5.9% drop. At the same time, new criminal case filings in Maine courts declined from 38,812 in fiscal year 2024 to 37,456 in fiscal year 2025, or roughly 3.5%.
Maybe whatever unexplained phenomena caused MCPDS indigent criminal defense cases to increase sharply while criminal cases filed in court dropped by nearly a third, from fiscal year 2014 through fiscal year 2025, has somehow begun to be corrected. Then again, case filings in the Defender Data system should decline noticeably now that the MCPDS has brought on line six regional public defender offices staffed by state-salaried public defenders. Maine’s public defender offices are intended to eventually handle 30% of the indigent criminal defense caseload, leaving the remaining 70% to be handled by private counsel working with the MCPDS through the DefenderData system.
It’s possible that the decline in the number of new DefenderData cases opened in fiscal 2024 only reflects cases that were taken by salaried public defenders in the regional public defender offices, cases that were therefore not routed to private counsel through DefenderData. If so, it’s also possible that the number of adult indigent criminal defense cases handled by the MCPDS, overall, including those handled by regional public defenders, actually rose once again in 2024, even while criminal case filings in court continued to decline. If so, how? Why? Who cares?
So much remains unexplained.
