California has a public defender crisis. A new bill seeks to force the state to confront it.

This May 13, 2026, Cal Matters article is about the California public defender crisis and how policymakers are working to address it. The article quotes Wren Collective principal Josh Schwartz, who quoted as follows: ” “There are dire signs in some jurisdictions of attorneys handling 300, 400, 500, or more cases in a year, including hundreds of felonies,” said Josh Schwartz, a researcher with the Wren Collective, a nonprofit organization advocating for criminal justice reform. The proposed bill mandating data collection, he said, “would be a massive step towards bringing the caseload crisis that we know is occurring into public view.”