Hinds County’s underpaid public defenders will temporarily earn more through the end of the year after the Board of Supervisors scrounged up money left over from construction on the new jail.
The roughly $261,000 boost to the Hinds County Public Defender’s Office will narrow the pay gap between the county’s prosecutors and public defenders for the next six months, but it’s far from the $1 million that advocates say is needed to achieve equity between the offices.
The Hinds County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the stopgap last week following years of denied requests for additional funding and a monthslong campaign by the advocacy group Defend Mississippi. The coalition brought attorneys, legislators and advocates together to argue that better compensation for public defenders would help the cash-strapped county save money elsewhere by reducing case backlogs and, therefore, the number of defendants sitting in jail at the county’s expense.
Salaries for the county’s public defenders come in at virtually half of what their state-funded counterparts in the district attorney’s office make, even though they handle similar caseloads. Advocates have long argued the lower pay drives public defenders out of the job, weakening a critical part of the justice system in a county where most defendants can’t afford a private attorney.
Gail Wright Lowery Credit: Courtesy photo“This funding is essential for our office to carry out our constitutional mandate,” Gail Wright Lowery, the county’s head public defender, told the board during the coalition’s initial push in March. “Poor people are entitled to a speedy trial, they’re entitled to an attorney and they’re entitled to a system that is fair.”
Supervisors responded that the county didn’t have the money within its existing budget, but planned to look for ways to boost the office’s funding.
“We’ve heard the pleas from everyone,” Supervisor Robert Graham, the board president who represents northeast Jackson and the town of Pocahontas, told Lowery at the meeting. “We want to assist, but we have to be good stewards of taxpayers’ dollars and money.”
The public defender’s office overwhelmingly relies on county funding while the DA is mostly backed by the state.
Lynn Seals, who was appointed county administrator earlier this year, said she found a way to lift public defenders’ salaries from her previous experience managing the county’s $45 million in federal pandemic relief. On her first day in office, Seals presented the board with a short-term solution: money leftover from a multimillion-dollar water tower project at the new Hinds County jail, funded through the American Rescue Plan Act.
She said the money was recently freed up after the county finished paying off contractor invoices for the water tower, which were less than expected. The structure will also supply water to south Jackson neighborhoods surrounding the new detention center on McDowell Road, according to WLBT.
“Obviously, the public defender’s office needed additional funding to put them close to where the DA’s office is, so this is a temporary fix,” Seals told Mississippi Today. “It was pretty much a no-brainer.”
‘Temporary fix’ passes, but fate of long-term funding remains unclear
Now, money leftover from the project will be used to provide temporary pay raises for the 23 employees at the public defender’s office, including attorneys, investigators and office staff. The team handles one of Mississippi’s busiest criminal dockets within the state’s patchwork public defense system, with attorneys juggling hundreds of cases at a time.
But the new money falls short of the $350,000 in “emergency equity” funding that Lowery requested from the board earlier this year to bring her attorneys’ starting salaries from $65,000 to $80,000. That would bring pay for public defenders in line with the only assistant district attorney position also funded by the county.
Starting pay for the rest of the county’s assistant district attorneys, who are funded by the state, is even higher than that benchmark at $120,000, according to State Public Defender André de Gruy. But the money that the board approved won’t be enough to reach that goal, according to Lowery.
She said she is calculating how much more each of her employees will earn with the temporary increase.
The temporary boost is even farther from Defend Mississippi’s funding goal of $1 million, which the coalition says is necessary for the public defender’s office to achieve equity with the district attorney’s office and hire “adequate” staff.
CJ Lawrence, an attorney with the coalition, called the temporary boost a “meaningful first step.” But advocates are still seeking a long-term solution.
Lowery plans to ask for money to “stabilize” the public defender’s office from next fiscal year’s county budget, according to Defend Mississippi. The board will start hearing funding requests later this summer for the new budget year that begins Oct. 1.
Pay increases for the county’s public defenders have historically been short-lived, as cost concerns have pushed the board to balk on committing long-term funding.
While this isn’t the first time the board has turned to federal pandemic-relief aid to temporarily raise pay for public defenders, the county won’t be able to lean on this windfall once the aid expires at the end of the year.
In a column published in Mississippi Today, Lowery wrote that after the board used $250,000 in pandemic-relief aid to boost her office in 2022, it became the only year she didn’t lose an attorney over low pay. During her six years leading the public defender’s office, she said she’s seen staffing shortages persist and nearly 20 attorneys resign.
After that boost expired in 2023, supervisors narrowly voted down Lowery’s proposal for a longer term solution: five new staff members and an annual $20,000 per-attorney pay raise for her office. Again, supervisors said the county didn’t have the money in its budget.
Even after the request was scaled back to just a $10,000 pay raise for the office’s attorneys, the board rejected it again.
Cost concerns
Public defenders’ pleas for more money have often clashed with supervisors’ concerns over mounting costs within the detention system — even as advocates contend that increased investment could help curb those expenses.
When Lowery came before the board in March to request additional funding for the public defender’s office, some supervisors pointed to the cost of housing inmates at the crowded Raymond jail and a Delta prison as reasons the county couldn’t afford it.
Hinds County is estimated to have spent at least $15 million since September 2023 on keeping inmates in the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, which the county turned to after closing a unit in the Raymond jail where federal court monitors found dangerous and poor living conditions. At the Raymond jail, crowding has become so severe that the board declared a state of emergency there in October.
District 2 Hinds County Supervisor Tony Smith at his office in the Chancery Courthouse, Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025, in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today“If we can get these people out, then we can have extra money to give you guys a raise,” Supervisor Tony Smith, who represents western rural Hinds County, told Lowery. “So the problem is, I understand you need more money. I wish we had (it) to give it.”
Defend Mississippi argues additional money would better equip public defenders to ease crowding by fighting for defendants to remain out of jail while their cases proceed through the courts.
“That’s what we do, and that’s what we advocate for in the public defender’s office because they are innocent until proven guilty,” Lowery told the board.
All five of the county’s circuit court judges wrote the board letters in support of her call for additional money.
As advocates hope to carve out more long-term funding from the upcoming county budget for the public defender’s office, Defend Mississippi is now organizing a campaign to collect signatures for a “thank you” letter to the supervisors.
“We are so grateful to the Hinds County Board of Supervisors for hearing the community’s call and taking this step,” Lawrence said. “This vote reflects real leadership that we don’t take for granted.”
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