Phil Bowen
Judges in England and Wales are in a funk, if you believe the latest judicial attitudes survey. Two thirds of judges feel they are less respected now than they were 10 years ago and nearly 90% think their working environment has got worse in the last 5 years. The survey suggests they have seen change- too much change- over the past ten years and that much of that change has been imposed on them, especially by Government, rather than driven by them.
At our Better Courts conference last week, we heard from the judicial outliers: judges who loved their jobs and had led change themselves. We heard from Judge Pratt, who has presided over Newark's first Community Court for who spoke passionately about how judicial behaviour in the courtroom can motivate people to change. We heard from Judge Crichton, who has been instrumental in setting up the Family Drug and Alcohol Court – a project providing intensive support to families with serious drug and alcohol problems. We heard from Sheriff Wood, who for ten years has been trying to tackle drug related offending in Glasgow. And we heard from Jelena Popovic from Victoria, Australia speak about her work in the use of therapeutic approaches in mainstream Magistrates’ Courts.
What they all had in common was that they had all embraced the twin pillars of our Better Courts work, problem solving and procedural justice. But perhpas, more importantly, in the context of the judicial survey, they were judges who had led changes themselves. They had been actively involved in making the court experience better and fairer and all had an intense interest in the outcomes that their court projects produced. Unsurprisingly, none of them said it had been easy: there were hurdles and challenges, partners to convince, money to be found and refound. But they had all led the change. And 80% of the delegates at our conference said they wanted to see judges and magistrates leading change, that they were crucial to making change happen in courts.
All of this suggests that judges feel the need to have ownership over change and that they can themselves be leaders of it. Almost all judges feel they play an important role in society and 86% feel a strong personal attachment to being a judge. If that strong commitment to being a judge, and that strong sense of their purpose in society, can be yolked to a commitment to leading change, then the prospects for building better courts are strong.