By the Justice Policy Institute

Over the last 20 years, elected officials and juvenile justice system stakeholders have changed policies and practices to create a more developmentally appropriate youth justice system, resulting in a reduction of the number of confined youth by 60 percent since the 1990s and reducing the number of youth automatically prosecuted as adults by 56 percent since 2007. This change in course is largely the result of policies that restrict the use of secure detention facilities and limit prosecution of youth in the adult court system. These trends in declining youth incarceration rates, while positive, have primarily focused on youth involved in nonviolent offenses. Moreover, despite a significant decline in the overall use of confinement, racial disparity in the juvenile justice system has worsened in many jurisdictions. This is due, in large part, to the fact that too many jurisdictions still rely on confinement and transfer to the adult system for youth who engage in violence. The research clearly shows that youth are best served in the least restrictive setting, regardless of underlying offense type. However, state practices frequently do not follow these lessons, turning to secure settings and transfer to the adult criminal justice system when other interventions would be more effective at addressing the underlying cause of the behavior and delivering a better public safety return on investment. Instead, these punitive practices worsen racial disparities, saddle youth with the collateral consequences of a criminal record if they are
prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system, and contribute to recidivism.

Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute, 2020. 24p.

Edited by Maria Eugenia Trombini · Elizangela Valarini · Vanessa Elias de Oliveira · Markus Pohlmann

This open access book examines the interplay between public and private sectors in Latin America's biggest market. It is the result of the binational research project “Organizational Crime and Systemic Corruption in Brazil” funded by the DFG and FAPESP (2018-2023). Its contributions analyze anti-corruption, political finance, and how for-profit organizations manage illegality.

Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2024. 293p. 

By Lauren B. Edelman, and Jessica Cabrera

With the rise of the #MeToo movement, there has been a groundswell of attention to sex-based harassment. Organizations have pressured high-level personnel accused of harassment to resign or fired them outright, and they have created or revised their anti-harassment policies, complaint procedures, and training programs. This article reviews social science and legal scholarship on sex-based harassment, focusing on definitions and understandings of sexual (and sex-based) harassment, statistics on its prevalence, the consequences of harassment both for those who are subjected to it and for organizations, and explanations for why sex-based harassment persists. We then discuss the various steps that organizations have taken to reduce sex-based harassment and the social science literature on the effectiveness of those steps. We conclude that many organizational policies prevent liability more than they prevent harassment, in part because courts often fail to distinguish between meaningful compliance and the merely symbolic policies and procedures that do little to protect employees from harassment

Annual Review of Law and Social Science Vol. 16:361-383 Vol. 16:361-383 

By Luc Altmann, Mariane Piccinin Barbieri and Sophia Kilroy 

This policy paper presents a step-by-step assessment to help countries implement the OECD Recommendation on Access to Justice and People-Centred Justice Systems. The paper draws on the United Kingdom's model for measuring access to His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. It is designed to help policymakers adapt this assessment model to their specific contexts and provides guidance on using data to identify and address barriers to court services. With a focus on people-centred justice, it includes good practices and country examples for using data to realise equal access to justice for all.

OECD Public Governance Policy Papers, No. 60, OECD Publishing

By Sarah Esther Lageson

This review analyzes criminal record stigma and surveillance through the concept of digital punishment: the collection and widespread dissemination of personally identifiable data by the American criminal legal system and subsequent private actors. The analysis is organized into three parts: a descriptive account of the technological, legal, and social factors that have created mass criminal record data; a theoretical framework for understanding digital criminal records through stigma and surveillance theories; and an argument that contemporary criminal records constitute digital punishment, with emphasis placed on how digital records are disordered, commodified, and biased. I close by raising policy-relevant questions about the widespread disclosure and use of criminal legal system data for extralegal purposes.

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2022. 5:67–90

By Ben Grunwald

We know that criminal defendants who plead guilty receive lower sentences than those convicted at trial, but there’s widespread disagreement about why. One camp of scholars believes this plea-trial differential represents a deeply troubling and coercive penalty; a second believes it’s merely a freedom-enhancing discount; and a third denies any meaningful distinction between the two at all. One reason for this disagreement is theoretical—it’s not at all clear what these concepts mean. Another is empirical—in the absence of precise conceptual definitions, we lack relevant data because scholars don’t know what to look for when searching for evidence of penalties and discounts in the real world. This Article seeks to bring greater theoretical and empirical clarity to the debate. To that end, I propose a theoretical definition of plea discounts and trial penalties. Applying this framework to the existing literature, I argue that there is strong theoretical and anecdotal evidence of trial penalties but little systematic empirical evidence. Nearly all of the statistical research has only studied the plea-trial differential; because both discounts and penalties are equally consistent with the existence of such a differential, the literature cannot distinguish between them. To develop a robust statistical test of the discount and penalty theories, we need to look elsewhere—where they make different predictions about prosecutorial behavior. Contrary to the views of the third camp of scholars—who maintain that’s impossible—I show that discounts and penalties are only indistinguishable if we assume litigation costs and acquittal probabilities are static. But they aren’t. They change all the time, and as a result, the discount and penalty theories diverge from each other, predicting different prosecutorial behavior. I argue that this theoretical insight might be used to develop an empirical test to help assess the prevalence and intensity of discounts and penalties in criminal court.

 37 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. 261 (2021).

By James Osborne

This paper explores the intersection of federalism and legal forgiveness mechanisms in the United States, emphasizing the role of the Tenth Amendment in safeguarding state autonomy. It examines how executive and legislative mechanisms, such as pardons, commutations, set-asides, and expungements, have evolved from their common law origins into modern legal practices. While executive clemency remains a crucial tool, legislative actions have also significantly shaped state-level forgiveness processes. By analyzing the balance between federal and state authority, the paper argues that states maintain the right to define and manage their mechanisms of legal forgiveness, reflecting the enduring principles of mercy, justice, and rehabilitation.

By Barry Friedman & Danielle Keats Citron

Working hand-in-hand with the private sector, largely in a regulatory vacuum, policing agencies at the federal, state, and local levels are acquiring and using vast reservoirs of personal data. They are doing so indiscriminately, which is to say without any reason to suspect the individuals whose data they are collecting are acting unlawfully. And they are doing it in bulk. People are unlikely to want this personal information shared with anyone, let alone law enforcement. And yet today, private companies are helping law enforcement gather it by the terabyte. On all of us. Our thesis is straightforward: the unregulated collection of this data must cease, at least until basic rule-of-law requisites are met. Any collection must be authorized by democratically accountable bodies. It must be transparent. It must be based on clear proof of efficacy (that a legitimate purpose actually is being served). There must be protections that minimize or avoid harms to individuals and society. And, of course, there must be judicial review of whether indiscriminate bulk data collection is constitutional, either at all or with regard to specific programs. The basis for this thesis is a first-of-its-kind review of instances, from the dawn of the Information Age, in which Congress acted on these very issues. Much of that history involves indiscriminate collection of data on Americans for reasons of national and domestic security, because national security represents the outer bounds of what law enforcement and intelligence agencies are permitted to do, and much of what is done in the name of national security is inappropriate for domestic policing. Yet, in incident after incident, Congress made clear that indiscriminate bulk collection of Americans’ data is unacceptable, unlawful, and of dubious constitutionality. To the extent that such collection was permitted at all, Congress demanded the very requisites specified above. Today’s indiscriminate bulk surveillance by federal, state, and local policing agencies violates virtually all of these congressionally established norms. It should cease, at least until the rule-of-law requisites are met. 

Virginia Law Review [Vol. 110:1351 2024.

By David Hyman | Mohammad H. Rahmati

Crime doesn’t pay. Or does it? We study the role of expectations regarding sanctions and the likelihood of detection on whether people obey the law. We examine how expectations influence whether people obey the law and conduct simulations of various enforcement counter-factuals. We find the average assessment of the likelihood of detection is quite accurate, but those who (mistakenly) believe the probability is lower than it is are much more likely to break the law. Further, expectations with regard to the likely consequences of getting caught are also heterogeneous. In our simulations, perceived fines have little impact on willingness to break the law, but a higher perceived likelihood of apprehension has an appreciable impact. Because marginal respondents are pivotal in the rate of law-breaking, debiasing expectations among the whole population has little impact.

Unpublished paper, 2024.

By Rita E. Kuckertz

This study examines the impact of Mexico’s 2008 criminal justice reform on the practice of utilizing torture and mistreatment to extract criminal confessions. Complaint data submitted to the National Commission on Human Rights (Comisión Nacional de Derecho Humanos, CNDH) and detainee survey data compiled by the National Institute for Statistics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, INEGI) were employed to assess if the use of torture and mistreatment by judicial sector operators had decreased (1) in states with advanced levels of reform implementation and (2) in judicial districts that had already implemented the reform. The author also examined the incidence of forced confessions before and after the reform’s implementation at the judicial district level. The author hypothesized that decreases in torture, mistreatment, and forced confessions would be observed in each of these cases. Basic correlation and regression tests were employed to assess the geographic hypothesis, while two chi-square tests for independence were utilized for judicial district data. The results of these analyses demonstrate evidence rejecting the null hypothesis in each instance, suggesting that the reform can indeed be credited for small but meaningful reductions in torture, mistreatment, and forced confessions in Mexico. The author argues that reforms must be accompanied by further action to address the pervasive use of torture and mistreatment in Mexico

San Diego: Justice in Mexico Department of Political Science & International Relations University of San Diego 2020. 51p.

By Kisha Bird, Caitlin Dawkins, and Lisa Johnson

Too many young people cycle in and out of prison, jails, and detention centers and face probation and parole conditions that keep them locked out of opportunity. These interactions with the criminal justice system demand the need for both equitable practices and programs that support second chances and large-scale investments in decarceration. They also require critical analysis and undoing of historical policies that manifest in an unequal and unjust criminal justice system. From Surviving to Thriving: Supporting Transformation, Reentry and Connections to Employment for Young Adults, from FHI 360 and CLASP, offers practical programmatic solutions that support second chances for young people and raise policy and systems considerations to address equity, collateral consequences, and opportunity. The report features insights of best practices from nine communities that are part of the Compass Rose Collaborative (CRC). Launched in 2017, the CRC began as a three-year program funded by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The CRC connects young adults ages 18-24 who have had contact with the juvenile justice or criminal justice system to employment, education pathways, and supportive services across nine communities. Policymakers and practitioners can use this analysis to increase equity and access to jobs and education for young people in need of another chance and in navigating the converging fields of workforce development, education, and criminal justice. Ultimately, the lessons shared here can offer a variety of stakeholders, including public agencies and employers, a roadmap to better understand strategies to support dismantling structural barriers and implementing strategies that support young adults on a journey of transformation and connectedness.

Washington, DC: CLASP, 2020. 28p.

By Ireland. Department of Health, Ireland. Department of Justice

It is increasingly recognised that the criminal justice system and in particular prison are not suitable to address the specific needs and challenges of those with mental health and drug addictions. The two reports of the Interdepartmental Group (IDG) to examine issues relating to people with mental illness who come in contact with the Criminal Justice System (dating from 2012 and 2018) contain recommendations on addressing the issues around this complex challenge. The Programme for Government: Our Shared Future is committed to the establishment of a Task Force to consider the mental health and addiction issues of persons in prison and primary care support on release. It also acknowledged the recent Mental Health Policy Sharing the Vision (StV) and committed to establishing the National Implementation and Monitoring Committee to oversee this work. The task force had three subgroups focused on three key elements to holistically meet these needs going forward; One subgroup, on Diversion, chaired by a member of An Garda Síochána, focused on diverting individuals with mental illness who have committed minor offences from progressing into the criminal justice system, in the best interests of both the public and the individual concerned. A second subgroup, on Irish Prison Service/Central Mental Hospital Capacity, which was chaired by an Irish Prison Service Director, examined the existing and future needs of individuals within the custodial criminal justice system. The objective of this group was to ensure that there is adequate provision of services to meet the mental health and dual diagnosis needs of those in prison. A third subgroup  examined community issues and through-care upon release from custody, and was chaired by the Director of the Probation Service. The objective of this group was to ensure that there are sufficient safeguards in place and adequate provision of services to prevent individuals from relapsing into damaging behaviours undermining the rehabilitative efforts made by the individual and the State. Overall, the Taskforce has put forward 61 recommendations which emphasise the shared responsibility of a number of Government Departments and agencies to deliver on meeting the needs of those with mental health and addiction challenges who come into contact with the criminal justice system.

Key actions include:

• Progressive and empathetic approach by Gardaí to dealing with offenders with mental health and addiction challenges, informed by mental health and addiction awareness training for Gardaí 

• Efficient and effective means of implementing a prosecution avoidance policy when Garda members come in contact with adults with mental illness and addiction, through the adult caution scheme

• The establishment of a pilot specialist dual diagnosis service to support prisoners with a mental health condition and substance misuse in a prison, to inform roll-out across the entire prison estate

• Access to tiered mental health supports that are recovery-oriented for every person with mental health difficulties coming into contact with the forensic system

• Reducing attrition by maintaining engagement and motivation at the point of release, including through the use of community-agreed discharge plans for prisoners (identifying multi-agency supports required).

  Dublin: Department of Health; Department of Justice.2022. 231p.

By Tirion Havard, Sarah Bartley, Ian Mahoney,  Chris Magill,  Chris Flood

This research was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and the British Academy, as part of their Understanding Communities programme. The research involved collaboration between four higher-education institutions, namely London South Bank University, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Nottingham Trent University and the University of Brighton. Partnerships were also formed with local and national organisations, including Clean Break Theatre Company, Restoke and Staffordshire Women’s Aid. The research focused on two communities: women with convictions (WwC) in Staffordshire and residents of Stoke-on-Trent. It used a mixed methodological approach that involved designing and delivering an arts-based transformative justice (TJ) intervention, undertaking ethnographic observations, running focus groups and conducting interviews with TJ experts. The overarching aims of this project were to see: • if TJ can effectively facilitate social cohesion and promote equality within local communities (for the purposes of this research, ‘equality’ is appraised by exploring strengths, assets, attributes, connectedness, enhanced individual welfare and social well-being); • if TJ can effectively support WwC to reintegrate and resettle into their local communities. To achieve these aims, we set out to explore and meet the following objectives: i. Identify the needs of and barriers faced by WwC when they try to resettle/reintegrate into their local community. ii. Identify and activate the strengths, assets and attributes that local communities can bring to the reintegration and engagement of WwC. iii. Determine the suitability of an arts-based approach to TJ for improving community cohesion. iv. Establish whether TJ can support the reintegration of WwC into their local community by making them feel stronger, more equal and more connected, and assess the broader impact this has on community cohesion. v. Establish whether TJ can enhance individual welfare and social well-being for both WwC and local residents and measure the costeffectiveness of the approach. vi.Inform policy and practice about the needs of WwC and how best to meet them through community-led interventions. vii. Contribute to the literature and knowledge base about using TJ to engage and integrate communities within a UK context. viii. Promote the personal and professional development of all those involved in the project. As a conceptual framework, TJ focuses on overcoming ingrained social and structural barriers to engagement and justice issues including the social, political and economic status of communities and the individuals within them. In focusing on community accountability for crime, victimisation and subsequent support for victims and people convicted of offences, TJ recognises that patriarchal social structures can legitimise violence, particularly towards women, and that the state, in this case the criminal justice system (CJS), perpetuates cycles of abuse and (re) traumatises people. TJ is vital for understanding and exploring societal attitudes to justice, and to engage with difficult conversations around the role that communities can play in addressing the harms associated with the actions of people within them  

Lonron; Nuffield Foundation, 2024. 86p.

By  Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Selective Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP) provides additional funding to law enforcement agencies implementing programs to deter dangerous driving. As a condition, agencies must report the number of traffic stop warnings and tickets issued to the state’s STEP grant administrator. Agencies risk reduced funding if found to be not “productive” by issuing a sufficient amount of citations. Police departments in Alabama use these federal grants to drive economic sanctions by paying patrol officers overtime to be “productive” and rewarding the “most active” officers with more overtime at the end of the year; those found to be not “productive” face suspension from the program in some departments. Using municipal budgets and audits, legal records of those ticketed and arrested over court debt, and federal and state grant data, this report examines the incentives that drive policing decisions in Alabama and highlights how traffic stops–primarily regulatory and economic stops–harm low-wealth people. The report also includes personal accounts of individuals who faced court debt and provides recommendations for law enforcement, courts, and lawmakers.

Key Findings:

68 percent of law enforcement agencies statewide that received STEP funding issued more warnings to speeders than to drivers with car insurance violations —who instead received tickets.Cleburne County adds an additional $30 fee to the base of their fines for planning, designing, constructing, furnishing, equipping, and financing a county jail.Findings from two municipal budgets showed revenue from fines and fees is volatile.In 2021, the Anniston Police Department was twice as likely to issue tickets for an insurance violation than a warning when compared to those stopped for speeding.  Drivers who miss enough payments or court appearances are issued a suspended driver’s license and an order for arrest.

Recommendations:

Alabama police departments should look into how the prioritization of moving violations over equipment and regulatory stops by the Fayetteville Police Department in North Carolina has reduced traffic fatalities, injuries, and racial disparities.Courts should hold ability to pay hearings before ordering an arrest or placing a person on payment plans.Lawmakers should require publicly available reporting on all traffic stops.

Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, 2023. 36p.

By The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform

After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, violence surged nationwide. Responding to the urgent need to address gun violence, the White House encouraged jurisdictions across the country to use a portion of their federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) allocations to fund violence intervention. President Joe Biden hosted a series of meetings at the White House with experts in the community violence intervention (CVI) field and launched the Community Violence Intervention Collaborative (CVIC), which provided technical assistance (TA) and funding to local CVI groups in 16 cities. The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) was a partner in CVIC. NICJR is also the convener of the National Offices of Violence Prevention Network (NOVPN), a firstof-its-kind learning community launched in 2021 as a space to build the expertise and capacity of OVPs and other similar agencies. The NOVPN was founded by NICJR and partners with a membership of 21 established OVPs. Since then, it has grown to more than 45 agencies (including several established with NOVPN support). NICJR also provides tailored training and technical assistance to cities, counties, and states across the US as they work to understand the nature of their local gun violence problem and enact proven, community-focused strategies to reduce that violence. In many cases, this work has been funded through ARPA dollars. As a result, NICJR is deeply aware of the impact of ARPA funding, as well as the challenges that communities face in ensuring the sustainability of violence reduction work, as these federal funds must be obligated by the end of 2024. The following report provides a snapshot of ARPA funds—including the use, impact, and potential for sustainability—in four jurisdictions: two cities, one county, and one state.   

NICJR, 2023. 11p.

By Mike Males

Media reports, politicians, and law enforcement lobbies are manufacturing a false picture of crime as Californians prepare to vote. Backers of anti-justice reform policies are falsely blaming liberal reforms and prosecutors for a non-existent “crime wave.” The anti-reform campaign is also exploiting public anger that retail thieves are “getting away with crime,” while the media fails to hold law enforcement and conservative jurisdictions accountable for their own failed practices. California’s criminal justice statistics (BSCC 2024; CDCR 2024; DOJ 2024) clearly show: 1) California’s 23 Republican-voting counties* consistently suffer worse trends in murder, violent crime, gun violence, and drug abuse than the 25 Democratic-voting counties or the 10 counties with mixed-voting patterns. 2) California’s conservative inland and rural counties suffer the state’s worst homicide trends. 3) All counties show similar property crime trends and rates. 4) California’s liberal counties2 have gotten tougher on crime, especially in the post-2010 reform era, incarcerating a greater share of people arrested – even though conservative counties have long incarcerated a greater share of their overall populations. 5) The real reason the public has the impression that retail thieves are “getting away with crime” is not reforms, but because law enforcement in all jurisdictions, regardless of politics, are making arrests in far fewer crimes today than 30 years ago. Law enforcement’s plunging “crime clearance rate” will be detailed in an upcoming report. 

San Francisco; Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice 2024. 7p.  

By Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe and  Ben Miller 

Public defenders are tasked with the unenviable job of representing some of the most vulnerable people in society when they are accused of crimes. At the same time, public defenders receive little thanks for protecting the marginalized and instead face insurmountable odds with insufficient resources and limited public support. Premal Dharia, founder and director of the Defender Impact Initiative, said, “Public defenders are on the front lines of the devastation wrought by our system of mass criminalization and they are guided by an unwavering dedication to the very people being devastated.” As the coronavirus ravages communities, courtrooms, jails, and prisons, public defenders are now indispensable to confronting the epidemic. While not medical professionals, public defenders are the front line, often the only line, between their clients and incarceration. Since jails and prisons have become hotbeds of COVID-19, with infection rates exponentially larger than the general population, public defenders have the added task of not just protecting their clients’ rights, but also, in many cases, their lives. Dan Engelberg, the chief of the trial division for the Orleans Parish Public Defender in Louisiana, aptly characterized the efforts of public defenders nationwide over the last few weeks as “heroic and tireless” as they strive to protect the health, humanity, and lives of their clients. The Justice Collaborative Institute asked nearly 200 public defenders from across the country how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their work and personal lives. The responses are revealing. Nearly half, as of April 2, 2020, reported clients incarcerated in correctional facilities with at least one confirmed case of COVID-19. Over 80%  did not think their local court systems were doing enough to protect the health and safety of their clients. (See Appendix for results from the questionnaire). Their concerns went beyond the spread of disease. Public defenders expressed anger over the perceived lack of empathy for their clients’ health, frustration with the many officials who treat their clients’ rights as disposable, and mental distress over the impact the virus is having on their clients, their loved ones, and themselves. Taken together, their responses form a powerful argument in support of policies, also popular among voters, to dramatically and urgently reduce jail and prison populations in response to COVID-19. The frontline accounts of public defenders reveal that far too many people in positions of authority continue to undermine public health and safety by processing far too many people daily into the criminal legal system, while at the same time failing to protect the millions of people behind bars. By doing so, they continue to place the lives of millions—people incarcerated at correctional facilities, people who go to work there, and people who live in surrounding communities—at grave risk. Law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and politicians should work with public defenders and urgently adopt policies to limit arrests, expand the use of cite and release, end cash bail, dismiss cases instead of needlessly dragging them out, and release as many people as possible from incarceration who do not reasonably pose a risk to public safety. Such steps can all be taken right now and are options public defenders across the country are advocating for, placing their personal health at risk in many cases, to do so.  

Davis, CA: UC Davis School of Law, 2020. 48p. 

By Christopher Dowling, Anthony Morgan and Kamarah Pooley

This study examines reoffending among 1,092 male offenders proceeded against for a child sexual offence in New South Wales between 2004 and 2013, including 863 child sexual assault offenders, 196 child abuse material offenders and 33 procurement/ grooming offenders. Seven percent of child sexual offenders sexually reoffended within 10 years of their first police proceeding for a child sexual offence, while 42 percent non-sexually reoffended. Risk of sexual and non-sexual reoffending was highest in the first two years. Child sexual assault offenders were the most likely to reoffend non-sexually, while procurement/grooming offenders were the most likely to reoffend sexually. There was evidence of transition to other sexual offence types, but this varied between groups. Indigenous status, history of offending and the number of child sexual offences emerged as important predictors of reoffending, although risk profiles varied between offender types

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 628. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2021. 16p.

By Troy Allard,  Molly McCarthy and Anna Stewart

Reducing Indigenous overrepresentation in the criminal justice system is justified on both social justice and economic grounds. We developed an innovative costing framework and estimated direct criminal justice system unit costs based on critical cost drivers. These estimates were applied to offender trajectories, modelling offences of all individuals registered as being born in Queensland during 1983–1984 (from ages 10 to 31). Separate trajectory models were developed for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Queenslanders in the birth cohort to enable separate cost estimations for these groups. Findings identified over one-half (53%) of the identified Indigenous cohort and 16 percent of the non-Indigenous cohort had moderate to chronic offender trajectories. Because of the high levels of recontact and sanction seriousness and length, Indigenous offenders were on average more costly. These findings emphasise the high cost of current criminal justice system responses to Indigenous and chronic offenders in particular and the need to consider innovative and more cost-effective approaches to reduce offending by individuals in these groups.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 594. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2020. 17p.

By Fionnuala Ratcliffe and Penelope Gibbs

How easy are the magistrates’ courts to access, navigate and understand? This report seeks to answer that question, drawing on the experiences of 82 volunteer members of the public observing their local magistrates’ courts over six months in 2023. CourtWatch London was a mass court observation project where citizen volunteers observed magistrates’ court hearings and reported what they saw. From July to December 2023, a diverse group of 82 volunteer members of the public (court watchers) visited their local London magistrates’ courts armed with a booklet of observation forms and a small amount of training. Between them they observed over 1,100 hearings and reported on the treatment of defendants, the decision-making of magistrates and district judges, and their experiences of attending the magistrates’ court as a public observer. This report summarises courtwatchers’ experiences of trying to observe magistrates’ court hearings and the barriers they faced. Their reflections on the justice they saw delivered there and specifically how young adult defendants were treated, are reported on separately. The courts are in principle open to any who want to observe, for whatever reason. Despite this, volunteers were sometimes severely constrained by a court system that has deprioritized public access. For example, court watchers could not hear court proceedings from many of the public galleries. The response from court staff towards volunteers bringing this to their attention ranged from assistance to puzzlement to hostility. Our efforts to alert senior London court representatives to the issue seemed to go unnoticed. Courtwatchers should not have needed to justify their presence but were asked to do so all too frequently. Staff questioning of public observers may be well-intentioned, but had potential to intimidate an unconfident observer. Inaccurate court lists, poor sightlines and courtroom jargon also made it difficult for courtwatchers to work out what was happening. All this sends a message to public observers that you can be there, but it is not the court’s problem if you do not understand what is going on. This report includes recommendations for how the courts can become more open, including: sending ‘secret shoppers’ into courts to check accessibility for members of the public; auditing audibility in courtroom public galleries and fixing any problems this reveals; better and fuller court listings online and in paper; and training for court staff and judges to re-prioritise the principles of open justice.

London: Transform Justice, 2024. 23p.