Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1,500 titles.
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Books: Research
This chapter and the one that follows present the findings of the empirical component of the study. This chapter focuses on the interviews conducted with 159 practitioners working in and around a number of court and tribunal settings: predominantly the criminal courts (both Crown and magistrates’), Family Court, Employment Tribunal (ET) and Immigration and Asylum Chamber (IAC). As will be discussed, the interview findings point to a range of ways in which the practitioners understood the meaning and functions of participation by lay witnesses and parties – henceforth ‘court users’ – in oral hearings held as part of judicial proceedings. From these accounts, it is possible to discern ten overlapping and interlinked conceptualisations of what participation entails and why it matters. The discussion here thus reflects practitioners’ own definitions and understandings of participation rather than those presented in the wider policy and academic literature, which are described elsewhere in this volume. Practitioner accounts provide insight into the meanings and functions of participation from the perspectives of those immersed in the day-to-day realities of the courts, and generate knowledge about how participation is mediated by those who directly interact with court users. This is an important undertaking as it has a bearing on how, and the extent to which, participation is achieved in practice. The final part of the chapter examines what practitioners had to say about barriers to and facilitators of participation, which advances thinking about how participation can be better supported in future. The practitioners interviewed for the study included judges, lawyers, magistrates, court staff and others who regularly attend court and tribunal hearings in a professional capacity, or provide support to witnesses or parties attending court.
It is a long-established legal principle in England and Wales – expressed in statute, case law, procedure rules, practice directions and guidance – that people should be able to participate effectively in the court and tribunal proceedings that directly concern them. There is wide agreement among law reformers and commentators, as well as among the judiciary and legal practitioners, that participation is essential to the delivery of justice. But what exactly does it mean for a lay person to participate effectively in judicial proceedings – whether the individual is a defendant or complainant in a criminal case, a party in a family dispute, a claimant or respondent in the Employment Tribunal, an appellant against an immigration or asylum decision, or a witness in any such setting? Why does their participation matter? What factors typically impede their participation and how can it be better supported? This book addresses these pressing, but hitherto neglected, questions in reporting on a unique study which combined cross-jurisdictional socio-legal policy analysis with close empirical inquiry. A raft of policy initiatives over the past two decades have sought to bolster participation in judicial proceedings, and particularly that of individuals considered ‘vulnerable’. Other developments in law and policy have, conversely, undermined the scope or capacity of court users to participate. These include reduced availability of publicly funded legal representation, and wide-scale court closures and the accompanying growing dependence on remote participation through live video- or audio-link and online processes. At the time this book is being completed (May 2020), the existing trend towards replacement of physical with virtual court attendance has accelerated to an extent few could have foreseen – as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the imperative to maintain social distancing within the justice system, as across all parts of society.
This study began with a review of national policy, and in Chapter Two a picture emerges of fragmented policy development and procedural changes affecting court user participation. The focus of national policy development has been on criminal and family court users who are deemed ‘vulnerable’, although the definition has become increasingly fuzzy within the legal system of England and Wales and contrasts with usage of the term ‘vulnerable’ in other professional spheres. A major part of this study was made up of practitioner interviews and court observations through which four key research questions were addressed: in short, what does it mean for a lay person to participate in court, why does it matter, what promotes/inhibits their participation and what are the implications for participation of limited legal aid, court reform and the urgent shift to remote hearings in response to the COVID-19 pandemic? Chapters Three and Four contain findings from 159 interviews and 316 hours of observations. This uncovered, for the first time, practitioners’ concepts of court user participation. The result: Ten Points of Participation – six relating to form and four relating to function (see Chapter Three, Box 3.1: Conceptualisations of Participation and at Table 5.2: Ten Points of Participation as a provisional framework for court user guidance). Observational data provided many examples of practitioners’ sympathetic and respectful treatment of court users, as well as their efforts to promote and support court user participation. Notwithstanding, there remain significant barriers to participation – for example, lack of legal representation, complex law and procedure, and impenetrable legal language in the courtroom.
The preceding chapters of this volume have discussed policy and practitioner perspectives on the legal principle that lay people should participate effectively in the judicial proceedings that concern them. This chapter is concerned with participation in practice, as observed by the research team across the range of courts and tribunals that are the focus of the study. After a short methodological note on the conduct of the observations, the chapter reports on differences between the variety of judicial settings, in terms of the institutional parameters of lay participation. This is followed by consideration of the commonalities across the settings. Here, it is argued that at the heart of almost every case observed by the researchers was a story of conflict, loss and disadvantage; and each lay court user’s ‘participation’ in the case could be understood as a process by which they told, or had told on their behalf, their own version of that story. The final part of the chapter describes how judicial proceedings did not simply entail the telling of the court users’ stories, but also their translation into legal questions and legal answers – and how this was a process which often had the effect of silencing and marginalising court users. The research team conducted a total of 316 hours’ observation over the course of 90 visits to 17 venues covering the Crown Court, magistrates’ courts, Family Court Employment Tribunal (ET) and First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) (IAC). The venues were located across the three cities – one in Wales, two in England – and surrounding areas which had been selected as the main fieldwork sites (see Chapter One).
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence
Effective participation in court and tribunal hearings is regarded as essential to justice, yet many barriers limit the capacity of defendants, parties and witnesses to participate.
Featuring policy analysis, courtroom observations and practitioners’ voices, this significant study reveals how participation is supported in the courts and tribunals of England and Wales. Including reflections on changes to the justice system as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it also details the socio-structural, environmental, procedural, cultural and personal factors which constrain participation.
This is an invaluable resource that makes a compelling case for a principled, explicit commitment to supporting participation across the justice system of England and Wales and beyond.
This chapter sets the context for empirical findings discussed in Chapters Three and Four. It provides an overview of law, policy and practice intended to support and manage lay participation in courts and tribunals in England and Wales, and presents a brief account of change over the past two decades in the jurisdictions under study. This includes a description of the development and evaluation of special measures for vulnerable and intimidated court users, and the guidance available to practitioners to improve their communication with court users and support participation. In assessing the effects of these various forms of assistance and professional guidance, the limited research on lay users’ experiences of court is examined. The chapter is framed by discussion of broader system issues, including reforms made to legal aid in 2012 and the courts modernisation programme in England and Wales, documenting how these factors are perceived to impact participation and access to justice. Additionally, reflecting the fact that the chapter was completed in May 2020 at the time of the UK’s ‘lockdown’ in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, some questions are raised about supporting lay participation when physical attendance at court is largely ruled out. Sources published between 2000 and 2020 were used to describe the policy and practice environment in England and Wales relating to lay participation. These comprised: • research identified through searching electronic databases – Criminal Justice Abstracts and Westlaw UK – to locate studies on effectiveness of practice and court users’ experiences; • policy and practice guidance from government (for example, HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)), the judiciary and professional bodies (for example, the Law Society);
This chapter presents an edited interview with Gail Bowen-Huggett, Advice Development Coordinator for ACFA: The Advice Network (formerly Advice Services for Avon). Gail had a background in the commercial sector before becoming in 2004 a manager at Bristol Debt Advice Centre (now Talking Money). Following this she became involved with ACFA, managing the network as it led a series of projects between 2013 and 2016 funded by the Advice Services Transition Fund (ASTF).
The interview provides an overview of a period in which the advice sector has been subject to significant changes and faced multiple challenges. Gail observes the effect of the loss of Legal Services Commission contracts and the role the ASTF played in mitigating this loss, questioning the capacity of the fund to create the changes it envisaged. From her experience of working with multiple agencies, she reflects upon the challenges faced by organisations with diverse funding arrangements, organisational structures and community needs. She argues in this respect for the importance of respecting the difference between paid staff and volunteers, thus highlighting a theme explored in John Clarke’s chapter (Ten), namely the unique nature of the reliance upon volunteer advisers within the Citizens Advice service. Despite these differences, Gail emphasises a theme discussed in Part Three of this book, namely the central importance of face-to-face advice, and the dangerous implications of an assumption that it can be abandoned.
SK: In the context of the cuts we have seen to the funding of advice agencies, I’ll start by asking what the key challenges are in managing funding contracts.
Second unsupervised inteMy diary of participating in the Citizens Advice training programme is littered with these experiences. Notes on Debt Relief Order procedure are followed by my own worries about forgotten credit cards or the Council Tax Bill – debt in the abstract intertwining with debt as personal anxiety. We are used to thinking of debt as a question of morality (I am frequently reminded by friends that both Swedish and German hold the same word for ‘debt’ as for ‘guilt’), or of time: debt as the purchasing of today’s consumption with tomorrow’s labour. It is unusual to think of debt as a legal question. Yet it is through debt that many people will become enmeshed within the reaches of law, whether being forced to engage with the power of a contract or to question the nature of ownership. What defines different debts, as opposed to debt generally, are the legal framings that shape, among other things, how, when and by whom they can be enforced and collected.
I will explore here what debt advice tells us about how ‘law’ and ‘life’ are intertwined in the practice of advice. This intertwining, I argue, has important implications for the ongoing role of advice in the context of an assumption, presented in a Ministry of Justice paper that preceded the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO), that volunteer advisers merely provide the public with ‘practical’ information (MoJ, 2010). I will focus on the question raised by this assumption: is there a difference between the advice they give and formal ‘legal advice’, and does this difference matter?
From our interviews and diaries of the Citizens Advice training programme, trainees noted that, compared to the perils of negotiating the labyrinthine intricacies of the UK benefits system, debt advice appears reasonably straightforward.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.
In a world dominated by austerity politics and policies, Advising in austerity provides a lively and thought-provoking account of the conditions, consequences and challenges of advice work in the UK, presenting a rare and rich view of the world of advice giving. Based on original research it examines how advisors negotiate the private troubles of those who come to Citizens Advice Bureaux (CAB) and construct ways forward. Exploring how advisors are trained, the strong contributor team reflect on the challenges facing Citizens Advice Bureaux in the future, where austerity will ensure that the need for advice services increase, while funding for such services declines.
Brian had help from a CAB solicitor preparing his claim of constructive dismissal against his employer. However, having to represent himself at hearing was an enormous strain, especially given his limited education, severe dyslexia and the stress he was already suffering as a result of the nature of the dispute.
Brian, a man in his early 40s, had worked as a car valet in a car sales yard for more than eight years. During this time, he claimed to have experienced verbal abuse from his immediate manager, the son of the owner. Brian had talked with the owner about the abuse on a number of occasions. This would improve the situation temporarily, but the bullying would resume shortly thereafter. When Brian attended a hospital appointment his manager phoned him, swearing at him and demanding he return to work. Brian collapsed shortly afterwards and was advised by a nurse not to go back to work. Brian resigned from his job. Initially Brian did not intend to seek legal redress for the way he had been treated at work and began looking for new work. After some reflection, Brian felt that his boss should not be able to get away with forcing him to leave a job that he loved. His wife encouraged Brian to contact Acas, whose representative suggested that he see a solicitor. Brian attended a free initial appointment with a solicitor who told him to submit a grievance letter to his employer and that further free legal information could be obtained from a solicitor at the CAB. Brian had a Gateway interview.
