A Case Study of an English Community Court
| Author | Daniel Gilling, Michelle Jolley |
| Pages | 55-69 |
55
Abstract This article reports on the results of case study research into the impl ementation
and operation of a community court in an English city. The research wa s premised upon an
understanding of the likely challenges posed by the introduction of a new modality of
‘doing justice’, as represented by community courts, with their more therapeutic and
restorative orientation and procedural differences to ‘mainstream’ summary justice. It
uncovered a number of implementation difficulties, including the unintended consequences
of decisions about the location of the court’s jurisdiction; a lack of ‘joined up’ policy as
conflicting initiatives served to undermine the court’s operation; and the resistance of
practitioners which limited the capacity of the court to engage in the teamwork requisite
for community courts. The article discusses these difficulties in the context of a critic al
understanding of government policy-making, with its emphasis more upon political and
ideological sy mbolism t han p ragmatism. It suggests that in pragmatically taking forward
the community court idea, serious thought nevertheless needs to be given to the
appropriate location of problem-solving within the criminal process, and to the need for
consistency in the more individualized approach of the community court, since both issues
underpinned some of the difficulties uncovered by the research.
Keywords community courts; therapeutic justice; problem-oriented courts.
This is a case study of the introduction of a community court in one English city, hereafter
referred to as Northtown. Northtown’s community court was part of an initiative
instituted by the Labour government in 2007, following the piloting of such a court i n
North Liverpool in late-2004 (Department of Constitutional Affairs, 2006), and in Salford in
2005, operating out of a mainstream magistrates’ court, as Northtown’s does. The
Northtown court was established alongside ten others, the intention being to contribute
to best practice, with a longer term view of mainstreaming community justice principles
into all magistrates’ courts by the end of 2008 (Donoghue, 2011). This target was later
pushed back to 2012 (Office for Criminal Justice Reform, 2009), and abandoned on the fall
of the Labour government in 2010, although the Coalition government shares an interest
British Journal of Community Justice
©2012 Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield
ISSN 1475-0279
Vol. 10(2): 55-69
To continue reading
Request your trial