Public defender’s offices are opening across Maine. The next step: staffing them.

In a Bangor courtroom last week, Judge Meghan Szylvian ruled the state had violated the constitutional rights of a criminal defendant who had been in custody for nearly a month.

The defendant qualified for a court-appointed attorney but had not received one — as was the case, on Friday, for 45 other defendants in Penobscot County Jail.

Logan Perkins, the county’s first District Defender, argued the man should be released from jail, subject to bail conditions, citing a recent Oregon court decision that ruled defendants had to be released if the state didn’t provide an attorney within seven days.

Perkins went on to note that after the Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that defendants had a constitutional right to an attorney, “the state of Florida was compelled to release nearly 4,000 defendants that were in custody without counsel at that time.”

But Syzlvian cut her off, citing the time. “I’m very familiar with the case law,” Syzlvian said.

Perkins was serving as lawyer of the day, a temporary lawyer who provides brief representation during arraignments and counsel reviews. She didn’t take on any of the cases she saw that day, even though it pained her not to do so, she said.

Instead she’s working on a long-term solution: building a new public defender’s office at the epicenter of the state’s indigent defense crisis. This requires developing training programs, establishing clear processes and, most importantly, hiring attorneys.

The hiring has proven difficult.

Perkins, who began her role in early July, needs to hire five attorneys. So far, she has only been able to fill one position — from someone already working elsewhere in the state’s burgeoning public defender system.

That’s partly because of the reasons — demographic,