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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.
This chapter examines the nature of the court process within the adversarial system of justice in England and Wales. It is argued that at the heart of this process is the tension between the purported aim of finding out ‘what really happened’ in relation to an alleged offence, and the practical impossibility (in many cases) of ever establishing a definitive understanding of complex and messy events. The truth remains elusive, very often, both in cases which go to trial, and in cases where there is a guilty plea. Court proceedings are therefore a means by which the authorities seek to manage conflict between different parties, without necessarily providing for a definitive resolution of the conflict or uncovering of how it came about. This chapter also considers the ritual and formality of the court process, and its many parallels with theatre. In the final part of the chapter, the authors consider the incongruities of court proceedings - observing that the public performances which take place in the courtroom frequently involve an intermingling of highly contradictory elements.
This chapter provides a broad context to the empirical research findings that are presented in the chapters that follow. The first part of the chapter sets out the essential structure of the courts system of England and Wales, and the place of the Crown Court within it. The routes by which a criminal case can come to the Crown Court, and some key facts and figures relating to court business, are also outlined here. Secondly, the authors describe the core components of a Crown Court trial and Crown Court sentencing hearing, and the key players (professionals, practitioners and lay participants) in the courtroom. The third and final part of the chapter addresses the theme of ‘access to justice’, noting that a significant feature of recent criminal justice policy has been the development of support within the courtroom for vulnerable and intimidated witnesses and victims and – to a lesser extent – for vulnerable defendants.
This chapter sets out the key questions addressed by the study and their significance. This is followed by a brief overview of prior empirical and theoretical research that helped to shape this study and to inform the conclusions drawn. Four such strands of research are identified: government research on court user experiences; prior ethnographic studies of the criminal courts; research and commentary on the ‘victims’ rights’ movement in Britain and elsewhere; and academic and policy-related research on ‘procedural justice’. The qualitative methods utilised in the study are described: namely, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with a total of 57 professionals and practitioners working in or around the Crown Court; semi-structured, in-depth interviews with a total of 90 adult court users (45 from the prosecution side and 45 from the defence); and 200 hours of observations of a variety of Crown Court hearings.
This chapter seeks to explain the ‘reluctant conformity’ observed in most court users, and has done so with reference to the concept of legitimacy. It is argued that most court users perceive the court process as, broadly, legitimate – meaning that they obey the rules of the process not because (or not solely because) they are forced to do so, but because they feel obliged to do so. The chapter identifies five constituent parts of court users’ perceptions of the legitimacy of the court process, which co-exist in differing combinations for different individuals. These five constituent parts of perceived legitimacy are: a sense of moral alignment with the work of the courts and the wider criminal justice system; experiences of positive outcomes (however defined) of the court process; experiences of fair decision-making (again, however defined) within the court process; experiences of respectful treatment by the professionals and practitioners with whom the court users have interpersonal contact at court; and – on the part of many defendants – a certain passive acceptance of what goes on in court and its consequences for them.
There are many chaotic aspects to the public performances played out in the Crown Court: key participants in trials and other hearings do not turn up when they are supposed to; equipment fails to work; vital paperwork cannot be found or contains glaring mistakes; delays and retrials are commonplace. The aim of this chapter is to convey these chaotic aspects of court business, but also to demonstrate that, despite the apparent disorganisation and disruption, cases progress through their various stages in an innately structured manner, and eventually reach some kind of logical outcome. The term ‘structured mayhem’ is used here to describe this juxtaposition of order and disorder in the business of the Crown Court. The theme of structured mayhem is examined in detail over the course of this chapter, the first part of which focuses on the process of getting a case to court, and the second part on the stop-start progress of cases once they are at court. The chapter concludes by looking at a single case – involving the trial of a woman accused of perverting the course of justice - to illustrate structured mayhem in practice.
It is observed in this chapter that there is much about the court process that victims, witnesses and defendants alike find difficult. Appearing in court can cause considerable fear, anxiety and distress. Various aspects of the experience can also be hard to understand. Cross-examination poses particular challenges for victims and witnesses, many of whom find it deeply troubling that they are seemingly ‘not believed’. Those defendants who are habitual attendees in court, in contrast, frequently adopt a resigned or even entirely passive stance towards proceedings. But what characterises the response of the vast majority of lay participants is a reluctant conformity: they comply with the expectations and social rules of the process, and rarely do they actively disrupt it – notwithstanding the extreme circumstances and hostilities that are at the heart of most court cases. The chapter considers some of the most problematic aspects of attending court for court users – and, particularly, the anxieties experienced, the inconveniences, the pressures of cross-examination, and difficulties of understanding – before going on to demonstrate that almost all court users, nevertheless, ‘follow the rules’ of the courtroom and judicial process.
This chapter argues that the main divide in the courtroom is not between prosecution and defence, or between defendant and victim, but between the lay court users and the legal professionals. This ‘them and us’ divide runs through all Crown Court proceedings and is manifest in various ways. In the drama of the courtroom, victims and witnesses play ‘walk-on parts’ and defendants are ‘ever-present extras’, while the legal professionals take on the starring roles. Despite a plethora of recent policy changes aimed at improving their standing, victims and witnesses are still often left feeling marginalised in the court process; without an adequate voice and unable fully to express themselves. Defendants, are in the paradoxical situation of being central to yet peripheral within proceedings yet. A key part of the marginalisation of lay court users is their exclusion from the often informal and friendly inter-relations among legal professionals. Finally, this chapter highlights the ambiguous place of the jury in a criminal trial. Jurors comprise the ‘controlled audience’ of the courtroom performance and have the ultimate decision-making responsibility; as such, they straddle the ‘them and us’ divide.
This concluding chapter reviews and summarises the key themes addressed over the course of the book – including the elaborate and ritualistic nature of the public performances played out in court; the evident marginalisation of lay court users; and court users’ perceptions of legitimacy of the court process and its outcomes. The final part of the chapter briefly considers the implications of the study findings for policy and practice. Here, it is argued that that the position of victims and witnesses at court has considerably improved over the past two decades, but could yet be improved much further in terms of the treatment they receive throughout the judicial process. With respect to defendants, it is noted that their marginalisation within the court process and stance of ‘passive acceptance’ have troubling implications for their ability to exercise fully their right to a fair trial. It is suggested that procedural justice perspectives on court processes and interactions can help to identify ways of challenging defendants’ passivity and building their capacity to participate effectively in the judicial proceedings which concern them.
Within the criminal justice system of England and Wales, the Crown Court is the arena in which serious criminal offences are prosecuted and sentenced. On the basis of up-to-date ethnographic research, this timely book provides a vivid description of what it is like to attend court as a victim, a witness or a defendant; the interplay between the different players in the courtroom; and the extent to which the court process is viewed as legitimate by those involved in it. This valuable addition to the field brings to life the range of issues involved and is aimed at students and scholars of criminal justice, policy-makers and practitioners, and interested members of the general public.