Does the placement of the accused at court undermine the right to a fair trial?

The UK Government has recently launched an ambitious reform of the court estate across England and Wales, including the closure of 86 courts and signi cant investment in new technologies. The time is right to rethink how courts of the future should look, with an emphasis on exibility of space and the use of technology. A longstanding architectural feature of criminal courts is the dock, where the accused is held during a trial. In recent years, this has evolved to include a fully-glassed in box, or in some countries, metal cages. The continued use of docks may undermine the rights of the accused, including the right to participate in one’s trial, the right to be presumed innocent, and the right to be treated in a digni ed manner. I present the results of an experiment testing whether the placement of the accused in a dock can impact on mock-jurors assessment of guilt. Jurors were more likely to return a guilty verdict when the accused was in a dock, compared to sitting at the bar table with counsel, independent of the evidence against him. If the government is serious about creating fairer and more effective courts of the future, then they need discontinue the use of docks in criminal trials

Community participation in restorative justice: rituals, reintegration, and quasi-professionalization

Community has long been identified as the key third party in restorative justice processes. However, when it comes to both theorizing community in restorative justice and the actual practice of community participation, conceptual clarity is lacking. A careful reading of the sociological literature on restorative justice and community point to two main reasons why we want to encourage community participation: the creation of effective ritual and offender reintegration. In this paper, we present findings from an empirical study of conferencing. We explore varieties of community participation and discuss the benefits and tensions that arise when community participation becomes a formalised element of a mainstream restorative justice practice

Storytelling rituals in jury deliberations

Research on jury deliberation tends to focus on deliberative outcomes, such as verdict decisions. Less attention is paid to the actual process of deliberation. This paper analyzes a video recording of a mock jury deliberation in a simulated criminal trial, focusing on facial expression, gesture, and discourse. Drawing on ethnomethodology and micro-sociological theories of ritual, I examine how jurors make sense of the evidence presented to them and how they work together to collectively produce a coherent narrative of events. I argue that a focus on the ritual dynamics of the deliberation help to understand how such a co-production can occur

Implementing video hearings (party-to-state): a process evaluation

The following research reports on a process evaluation of the user experience of the HMCTS video hearings pilot for party-to-state hearings, in this instance the First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber). This is the first pilot conducted in England and Wales for Fully Video Hearings (hereafter: video hearings), where all parties participate in a hearing remotely. The pilot used an early technical product to test the concept of video hearings. The research draws on interviews with video hearing users – appellants, their representatives, and HMRC representatives; observations of video hearings and traditional in-person hearings; and interviews with Judges managing the hearings. The research is small scale and exploratory. We recommend that the video hearings pilot is expanded, data collection on the process continues, and data on outcomes is collected

Trajectories and typologies of pre-sentence restorative justice rituals

Enthusiasm for restorative justice has seen conferencing brought in to the mainstream of criminal justice systems around the world. This raises concerns over how integration into criminal justice will impact conference dynamics. In this article, we present new findings from a study of restorative justice conferences at the pre-sentencing stage for adult offenders. By documenting the interactional dynamics of conferences it reveals the emotional trajectories that conferences take, and the factors that shape immediate conference outcomes. Our results show both the positive aspects of what restorative justice is capable of achieving as well as the tensions that arise when it is integrated within conventional criminal justice. We offer a refined vision of what success can mean in restorative justice at the pre-sentence stage

The dock on trial: courtroom design and the presumption of innocence

This article examines the place of the criminal dock in courtroom design. Challenges to the use of the dock have been based upon the inability of the defendants to hear effectively, to communicate with counsel, to maintain their dignity, and to benefit from the presumption of innocence. Increasingly courts are incorporating secure docks, where defendants are partially or completely surrounded by glass (or in some countries, metal bars). To what extent do these changes and modifications undermine the right to the presumption of innocence? We present the results of an experimental mock jury study that was designed to test whether the placement of the accused influences jurors’ perceptions. We find that jurors are more likely to convict defendants when they are located in a traditional dock or a secure dock, compared to sitting next to their counsel at the bar table. We conclude by discussing the implications for trial procedures, counsel communications, and courtroom design

Twelve experiments in restorative justice: the Jerry Lee program of randomized trials of restorative justice conferences

Objectives: We conducted and measured outcomes from the Jerry Lee Program of 12 randomized trials over two decades in Australia and the United Kingdom (UK), testing an identical method of restorative justice taught by the same trainers to hundreds of police officers and others who delivered it to 2231 offenders and 1179 victims in 1995–2004. The article provides a review of the scientific progress and policy effects of the program, as described in 75 publications and papers arising from it, including previously unpublished results of our ongoing analyses. Methods: After random assignment in four Australian tests diverting criminal or juvenile cases from prosecution to restorative justice conferences (RJCs), and eight UK tests of supplementing criminal or juvenile proceedings with RJCs, we followed intention-to-treat group differences between offenders for up to 18 years, and for victims up to 10 years. Results: We distil and modify prior research reports into 18 updated evidence-based conclusions about the effects of RJCs on both victims and offenders. Initial reductions in repeat offending among offenders assigned to RJCs (compared to controls) were found in 10 of our 12 tests. Nine of the ten successes were for crimes with personal victims who participated in the RJCs, with clear benefits in both short- and long-term measures, including less prevalence of post-traumatic stress symptoms. Moderator effects across and within experiments showed that RJCs work best for the most frequent and serious offenders for repeat offending outcomes, with other clear moderator effects for poly-drug use and offense seriousness. Conclusions: RJ conferences organized and led (most often) by specially-trained police produced substantial short-term, and some long-term, benefits for both crime victims and their offenders, across a range of offense types and stages of the criminal justice processes on two continents, but with important moderator effects. These conclusions are made possible by testing a new kind of justice on a programmatic basis that would allow prospective meta-analysis, rather than doing one experiment at a time. This finding provides evidence that funding agencies could get far more evidence for the same cost from programs of identical, but multiple, RCTs of the identical innovative methods, rather than funding one RCT at a time