What’s New With PDAP

What’s New with PDAP: A Look at the PA Public Defender Retention & Sustainability Report

July 21, 2025 – Public defense work comes with its own unique challenges. In 2024, the Indigent Defense Advisory Committee (IDAC) identified employee retention as one of the most significant issues facing the state’s Public Defender offices. When the IDAC’s data showed large numbers of PDs leaving their job within five years, a need arose to identify the cause of these high turnover rates.

Last year, PDAP’s Pennsylvania Defender Retention and Sustainability Committee surveyed Public Defenders across the state to understand how to increase retention rates in Public Defender offices and ensure that PDs are able to keep providing quality representation to their clients. They then used the results of this survey to create the Pennsylvania Public Defender Retention & Sustainability Report, released in early 2025.

The survey focused on five major areas: sustainability indicators, accessibility to support, office wellness factors, personal wellness factors, and demographic information. More than 70% of Public Defender employees who participated reported experiencing symptoms of the following:

Secondary (vicarious) trauma = results from exposure to someone else’s trauma. Some symptoms include invasive thoughts or images, nightmares, emotional distress, lack of sleep, and hyper-vigilance.
Compassion fatigue = results from working with people who are traumatized. The classic symptom is a decline in the ability to feel sympathy and empathy, and then act from a place of compassion.
Burnout = comes from chronic stress that eventually leads to physiological and neurological shifts that affect emotional and physical well-being of a person’s life as well as their motivation to do their job.
Moral injury = “when one feels they have violated their conscience or moral compass when they take part in, witness or fail to prevent an act that disobeys their own moral values or personal principles.” Guilt, shame, disgust, and anger are classic emotional responses.

The report discusses how Public Defender offices can reduce turnover by paying attention to the factors that cause these specific issues. It also includes quotes from PDs Taylor Dunn (Pretrial Division Chief, Delaware County), Sam Encarnacion (former Deputy Chief Defender, Lancaster County), Samantha Etzi (former Social Worker, Allegheny County), John Munoz (former Deputy Chief Defender, Allegheny County), and Jared Soto (former Social Worker, Carbon County).

The Retention and Sustainability Committee also used information from the survey to identify seven recommendations that Public Defender offices can implement to increase retention rates and encourage better representation for their clients:

Implementing and following systems for using PTO that prioritize the employee
Creating, maintaining, and upholding mission statements and core values that guide office processes
Encouraging regular one-on-one and staff meetings for open lines of communication
Publishing and communicating case management systems
Creating and encouraging use of space to support PDs in maintaining their mental health
Encouraging and providing flexibility for PDs to engage in personal hobbies and non-work activities
Seeking out and utilizing non-attorney support

PDAP’s goal is for more Public Defender’s offices across the state to implement these solutions, where possible, in order to retain more employees and ultimately improve the quality of representation they can provide to their clients. This report was featured during the 2025 Chiefs’ Leadership Conference, and it will also be presented as part of a wellness training series through NAPD happening later this year.

Those interested in reading more about these suggestions can check out the full report here, as well as on our Defender Retention and Sustainability page and alongside the rest of our password-protected wellness resources.

PDAP would also like to thank Alexandra G. Fox (Assistant Public Defender, Lancaster County) for serving on the PA Defender Retention and Sustainability Committee and co-authoring this report, along with Andrew Capone (PDAP Assistant Training Director for Western PA) and Julie Hyman (PDAP Manager of SWIM Advocacy and Engagement).

Our mission is to provide tools, strategies, mutual support, training and information to Public Defender Offices in Pennsylvania; to be the voice of public defense in Pennsylvania; and to promote best practices in the leadership, management, and administration of justice in Pennsylvania.