[8] In addition to overseeing public defense services for defendants at trial, the committee also assigns counsel to represent inmates in parole hearings.
[10] In 2008, CPCS had 253 staffers, with an estimated 3,000 private attorneys on the list of lawyers approved to be appointed counsel.
[2] Public defenders and other CPCS employees, such as investigators, have repeatedly but unsuccessfully attempted to unionize; efforts in 2015 and 2018 to form a bargaining unit failed.
[13] In 2017, thousands of private court-appointed attorneys in Massachusetts were not paid for weeks for their services; the legislature ultimately approved retroactive funds to compensate them.
[15][16][17] In 2019, CPCS's servers were targeted by a ransomware attack, disrupting operations;[18][19] it took around 10 business days for data to be fully restored.