Reconceputualising security strategies for courts: developing a typology for safer court environments

There have been heightened concerns about security in courts in recent years, prompting a strong response that has largely been focused on perimeter security. This paper draws on recent research conducted in Australian on court user’s safety needs, to propose a typology for designing safer courtroom environments that moves beyond the entry point to the court, and incorporates consideration of process and design elements

Remote participation and the distributed court: an approach to court architecture in the age of video-mediated communications

This research was made possible through the Australian Research Council Linkage Project "Gateways to Justice: improving video-mediated communications between justice participants" 2008-2010 (LP0776248. Project Leader: Professor David Tait, University of Western Sydney).© 2011 Dr. Emma Louise RowdenThe taking of evidence via video-mediated communications has become commonplace in many countries, with adoption for other court-related business occurring at an increasing rate. In some Australian courts, trials are now being held where the jury will not see a live witness. This is seen by many as the beginnings of ‘virtual courts,’ although the term distributed court is perhaps more apt to describe what is actually occurring. Previous research has been piecemeal and focused on particular instances of use; as such, they miss the wider trend of what I term remote court participation as a whole. Widespread use of audio-visual technologies in courts in their present form raises important questions about the ways in which communication technologies extend the boundaries of the court over multiple sites and alter the performance of justice in significant, and at times problematic, ways. I argue that far from being a neutral insertion, videolinked technologies as they currently operate fundamentally change the experience of court proceedings and the role of the courtroom and courthouse to structure events. In this analysis, it was found that significant shifts are occurring at each level of experiencing the court: from that of the individual, of the group involved in court proceedings, as well as the wider community. It is argued that current remote court participation practices may not only question several fundamental principles of the justice system — including the right to a fair trial — but may also be challenging the very role of the courtroom and the courthouse in establishing the environmental conditions for court proceedings. In this thesis I ask: “how might remote court participation be achieved in a ‘just’ manner, and how might the court environment help achieve this?” Site visits and interview data centered on current practices of remote court participation in Victoria and Western Australia reveal legal actors lack awareness regarding the active and dynamic role that audiovisual technologies, in conjunction with the environment of the court, have in constructing the court event. Rather than fetishizing certain aspects of the discrete court in the form of the courtroom located within a courthouse, this thesis presents a view of ‘doing justice’ as the product of a network. It is argued that those qualities that are perceived to be ‘lost’ by current remote participation practices, may be re-established by alterations to the configuration of the technology, the human processes and the environmental conditions of the distributed court

Virtual courtroom experiment: Data report: Third evaluation of a virtual pilot study conducted by JUSTICE

This report provides a summary of the views of almost a hundred people who participated in the virtual jury trial experiments conducted by JUSTICE in conjunction with AVMI (now part of Kinly) in the summer of 2020. This is the third in a series of reports on the JUSTICE experiments. 1. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused considerable disruption to court business. The criminal justice system is said to be now facing a backlog of 40,000 cases that will be difficult to clear. Some Crown courts have now opened for jury trials with social distancing measures in place but this is not sufficient to manage existing demand or begin to clear the backlog. The backlog has caused a number of serious problems. These include defendants on remand being incarcerated for longer periods; increased waiting times; risks of more abandoned prosecutions; increased stress and a lack of work for the legal profession. 2. The purpose of the four experiments was to determine whether it is possible in a crisis such as the one we are facing to hold ‘dispersed’ or virtual trials in which the principles of fairness, accuracy of evidence and certainty can be met. In order to test the case for virtual jury trials JUSTICE and a firm of technology experts (AVMI) organised four virtual trial experiments between April-June 2020. 3. In virtual trials all the participants appear from their separate locations so that the courtroom takes the form of a shared ‘public’ screen. A series of other secure virtual rooms also exist behind this shared view of the virtual courtroom. These include a virtual room for the defendant to consult with counsel and a jury deliberation room. The platform that AVMI have designed for this experiment also allows documents to be viewed on screen. Certain elements of the experimental design, such as the type of case and the people involved, were consistent across all four trials, however, this was a piece of action research where improvements were made between trials, culminating in the creation of a physical jury hub. 4. The fourth trial with a physical jury hub was widely considered by the organisers to be the most successful of the four experiments. There were far fewer technical problems and all of the responsibilities of jurors regarding technical provision were removed. These findings are in addition to the benefits outlined in the first report of the pilot which suggested that the defendant being more central to deliberations on screen that they would be in a physical court had a democratizing effect. This report adds the voices of those who took part in each of the experiments and responded to a questionnaire sent out by JUSTICE

Supporting Online Justice: Enhancing Accessibility, Participation and Procedural Fairness

The Goals of the Research Perceptions of accessibility and fairness are central to the legitimacy of the legal system. This makes it imperative to ensure that all lay participants in legal hearings understand how to prepare, what will happen, and how best to present their case. This is increasingly important as the proliferation of online hearings risks disengagement with the justice system and access becomes more complex for the digitally disadvantaged. This research has focused on how we can best support lay users in online hearings by researching, testing and refining five public information films for their use. These films have been produced in partnership with HMCTS, members of the Judiciary and the advice sector. Our research demonstrates that there is high demand for resources of this kind which are evidence based, focus on human centred design and sensitive to a range of needs. Outputs of the Project Four of the five accessible films have been produced for specific jurisdictions namely the Special Education Needs and Disability Tribunal, the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal, the Employment Tribunal and the Family Court (private business). A fifth film containing general advice about online hearings has also been made. Each of the films have optional English subtitles, which have also been translated into: Welsh, Polish, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati and Punjabi. British Sign Language versions are also available. The films are platform agnostic to aid ‘future proofing.’ By using a bank of 450 customised digital illustrations rather than live actors, the films can also be easily updated and drawn upon in the future to make additional films at minimal cost. Additional outputs include the design guidance contained in this report, survey data deposited with the UK Data Service and a flyer advertising the films for use by the advice sector. The films have been placed on the HMCTS YouTube site and links to them will appear in correspondence with litigants in the four jurisdictions we have worked with. The Consultation, Research and Design Cycle The production of the films involved a cyclical process including stakeholder engagement, a national survey, the production of a prototype film, testing the films with professional, lay and disadvantaged users in focus groups, refinement of the prototype, and production of customised films for the remaining four jurisdictions. What did our research reveal about designing resources for lay users? Accessibility and the needs of disadvantaged users of the justice system have been at the heart of this project from the outset. This report identifies seven important issues for consideration in producing materials for lay users of the justice system and the challenges involved in them. These are empathy, language, diversity, accessibility, intelligibility, participation and customised advice. Conclusion It is evident that there is considerable demand for more work in this vein, as well as an appetite within HMCTS and the judiciary to be involved in taking this initiative further

Supporting online justice: Enhancing accessibility, participation and procedural fairness

Perceptions of accessibility and fairness are central to the legitimacy of the legal system. This makes it imperative to ensure that all lay participants in legal hearings understand how to prepare, what will happen, and how best to present their case. This is increasingly important as the proliferation of online hearings risks disengagement with the justice system and access becomes more complex for the digitally disadvantaged. This research has focused on how we can best support lay users in online hearings by researching, testing and refining five public information films for their use. These films have been produced in partnership with HMCTS, members of the Judiciary and the advice sector

Methodology Report: Supporting Online Justice Project

This is the technical and methodological report to accompany the guides to the creation of the public information films for the Supporting Online Justice project. The project resulted in the production of five public information films for Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunal's YouTube account. This report is a summation of the methods and technical aspects that led to the key film outputs of the Virtual Justice project. The project was an 18-month ESRC-funded Rapid Ideas to Address COVID-19 UKRI research grant, for which I was a co-investigator with researchers from the University of Oxford (led by Professor Linda Mulcahy). The films are roughly 15 minutes long each and outline important information litigants need to know to successfully participate in an online court hearing. These accessible films were developed using an extensive process of consultation and testing with a range of lay and professional court staff and users, as well as members of the judiciary. The report here outlines the processes the team undertook to create the scripts, and to design and produce the films. The films produced were designed to be useful across a range of courts and tribunals which sits alongside several jurisdiction specific films made for: the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal; the Social Security and Child Support Tribunal; the Employment Tribunal (two versions – one for England & Wales and a different version for Scotland), and the Family Court (Private). They have been made available with subtitles in six languages along with a British Sign Language version of each. All films are now available, you will find the link to the full playlist of all films on the HMCTS YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Altka7XMeXog5ZFzBT9d

Sentencing by videolink: up in the air?

A United Kingdom pilot scheme - where defendants pleading guilty to certain offences remotely from a police station are sentenced via videolink - has sparked considerable controversy. Although attracting less attention, sentenc-ing by videolink also occurs in Australia. The enabling legislation contains few guidelines for the exercise of judicial discretion and little is known about the nature and scope of remote - or videolinked - sentencing, or its impact on the sentencing process and participants. This article presents unique findings from an Australian empirical study about uses of videoconferencing in the justice system. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 56 judicial officers, court administrators, court staff, justice department officials, prosecutors, witnesses and lawyers. Responses pertinent to sentencing reflected both the rationale for implementing remote sentencing as well as concerns about remote sentencing procedures. Results indicated that the use of videolinks can alter the nature of sentencing proceedings, but views that technology necessarily degrades the sentencing process or renders it less effective are overly simplistic. Attention to the configuration of the technology and participants, as well as protocols and procedures for videolink use can potentially preserve the essential functions of sentencing conducted remotely. Recommendations on ways to address stakeholders' concerns without compromising the critical features of sentencing proceedings are proposed