Mistrust is endemic in the justice system, claims Lived Experience of the Law, a new report based on 131 in-depth interviews with people who have been through the family and/or criminal courts, and co-produced by a team of qualified peer researchers with their own experience of the courts and legal system.
Lived Experience of the Law has been a three-year research project from justice charity Revolving Doors and the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, University of London, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
Headline findings include:
- Court experiences caused harm in addition to that associated with the circumstances of the case. Court experiences were said to have caused a deterioration in mental health, especially those involved in family proceedings. A significant minority of participants described feeling suicidal.
- An overwhelming lack of trust in the justice system. This extended beyond the courts into the wider criminal and family justice system, and to social services.
- For both defendants and victims, previous negative police interactions affected expectations of receiving fair treatment from the other parts of the justice system.
- Faced with delays and postponements at every stage of the criminal justice process, participants felt at the mercy of an overstretched and under-resourced legal system. Most participants depended on publicly funded legal representation. In criminal proceedings, some participants felt pressure to plead guilty to reduce lawyers’ workloads.
The research, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, was co-produced with a team of peer researchers, all of whom have personal experience of the justice system themselves. It presents candid perspectives of how contact with legal authorities over a person’s lifetime shapes their expectations of fairness, effective participation and access to justice.
