JEFFERSON CITY — The panel overseeing Missouri’s network of public defender offices is considering whether to shutter its bureau in the Bootheel city of Kennett as a result of its inability to recruit staff attorneys who want to work there.
Mary Fox, director of the Missouri State Public Defender System, said Tuesday she has recommended the Kennett office be closed and merged with the Jackson office, about 100 miles, or a 1½-hour drive, north.
Fox said the six-member Missouri State Public Defender Commission, which is appointed by the governor, discussed the possible closure at its June meeting and is scheduled to consider it again at its Aug. 1 meeting.
It is possible the commission could take action at that time, Fox said.
“The problem has been our inability to staff the Kennett office,” Fox said. “Hiring has been a struggle the last several years, but in that area, it’s been more than just a struggle.”
Fox said one attorney currently works out of the Kennett office despite funding for five total attorney positions, including four assistant public defenders and one lead district defender.
She said the Kennett office, serving Dunklin County, opened 956 cases last fiscal year, “which is clearly too much for one attorney.”
“We’ve been hoping to hire people,” Fox said. “We contracted out a significant number of cases from down there.”
Fox said no one has applied for an assistant public defender job at the Kennett office since March 2021, and wouldn’t comment on applicants for the district defender position.
“I think we could operate more efficiently if the office was operated out of” Jackson, Fox said.
The Jackson office covers Bollinger, Cape Girardeau, Mississippi, Perry and Scott counties. It has also absorbed cases in Stoddard County, which had previously been handled by the Kennett office.
Fox said the Poplar Bluff and Portageville offices, also covering southeast Missouri regions, are staffed with five and four attorneys, respectively. Those two offices have also faced staffing challenges, she said.
Of Kennett, she said, “anecdotally, my understanding is that it is a difficult jurisdiction in which to practice.”
She said Kennett, population 10,507, is “a very small town with not a lot nearby,” which has also hurt hiring.
The much larger Jackson office, near the college town of Cape Girardeau, hosts 11 attorneys with three more scheduled to come on board, Fox said.
If the commission closes the Kennett office, its five positions would be transferred to the Jackson office, she said.
Fox said if clients can’t make it to a public defender office, attorneys will meet them elsewhere or contact them by phone or video conference, or visit them in jail.
The public defender system operates 33 trial offices and serves indigent defendants in 114 counties and the city of St. Louis.
Kennett is located in one of Missouri’s poorest counties, Dunklin, where the population shrank more than 11% between 2010 and 2020, according to the U.S. Census.
The census pegged the county’s population at 28,283 in the last national headcount, down from 31,953 a decade earlier.
Kennett lost its hospital in 2018, and Dunklin County’s poverty rate of 22.3% far exceeds the overall state poverty rate of 12.7%, according to the census.
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