Lived Experiences of the Law: Update and Emerging Findings
- Oct 7
- 8 min read
Updated: Oct 10
This blog is an update of the series from the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, University of London, guest edited by Dr Amy Kirby. This blog series reflect upon debates about contemporary methodological approaches and novel and emerging legal issues on the topic of lay participation in the courts. We do this by putting two of our current projects under the spotlight: Lived Experience of the Law: A Research and Policy Project (funded by the Nuffield Foundation, conducted in partnership with the charity Revolving Doors) and Voicing Loss: Meanings and implications of participation by bereaved people in inquests (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, grant reference ES/V002732/1, research conducted in partnership with the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath).
Keywords: lived experience; criminal courts; family courts; domestic abuse; co-production; legal representation.
In earlier blogs for this series, we have introduced our project – ‘lived experience of the law’, funded by the Nuffield Foundation – and outlined its aim to explore people’s experiences of the family and criminal courts in the context of their wider encounters with the law and justice system. We have presented findings from our pilot study and our peer researchers have shared their experiences of the project. We have also provided reflections on our narrative interviewing approach. As we enter the final stages of the project, here we provide an update on our progress, discuss emerging themes and outline our dissemination plans.
Update: Methods, analysis and co-production
We have completed 132 narrative interviews with people with lived experience of the criminal and/or family courts across England and Wales. We worked with a number of NGOs to recruit participants (to whom we are very grateful), including: Advance, Birth Companions, Breakthrough, Cafcass (Parent Forums), CassPlus, Galop, Keyring, Khady’s Dream, Imkaan, Maslaha, Muslim Women in Prison, Nacro, Pac-UK, Pact, Pause, St Giles Trust, Therapeutic Productions, Women’s Aid, Sikh Women’s Aid and Zahid Mubarak Trust. Other participants were recruited via the Revolving Doors membership, through snowball sampling from our interviewees and/or peer researchers, or purposively via social media. All participants received a £40 voucher as a ‘thank you’ for their time.
In terms of the demographics of the sample, 42% are from minoritised ethnic groups; 48% are women and 27% are aged 30 or under (age range 18-77 years). Key biographical details include:
For 40% of participants, their most recent experience was of the family court and for 60%, it was the criminal courts.
For 44%, this was a first contact with the justice system.
54% had some contact with other type(s) of court (including crossover between family and criminal).
17% had contact with social services and care system as a child.
29% talked about drug and alcohol misuse being linked to their contact with the justice system.
For 39% of participants, domestic abuse and coercive control featured heavily in their stories.
41% had experienced periods of homelessness, including on release from custody.
59% talked about their mental health, including disclosing diagnosed conditions, anxiety, post-natal depression, PTSD, trauma experienced through contact with the justice system.
Central to our analytic approach to the data was to compile narrative ‘summaries’ of interviewees’ accounts, usually of around 4-6 pages each. These provide a sense of each interviewee’s story, key quotes and emerging themes from the interview, alongside our own analytic reflections on reading the transcript. The below excerpt of Dejon’s (not his real name) story provides a snapshot of this:
Dejon: A young black man from an inner city area
First major encounter with CJS was arrest for GBH, affray, and knife possession. He and friends were confronted by a local man armed with a knife, who attacked his friend. Dejon describes reacting in “survival mode,” referencing a past stabbing, but in court only partial CCTV was presented. “They only showed the bit… not the whole story.”
He gave a “no comment” interview, explaining: “As soon as you start talking… it will never be in your favour.” He emphasised he did not personally carry a knife, though admits one was present.
Police distrust was a central theme of his story; he was first stopped when he was 11 or 12 and was fatalistic about “police racism, ‘it is what it is!” Police treatment of people of colour made him question the law and how it is enforced: “I just feel ashamed… yeah very ashamed of the law”. He views the police as selective in their enforcement: “They are picking and choosing who they want to arrest and put away.”
He spent 10 months on remand before pleading guilty to knife possession, a move advised by his solicitor. This reduced the charges. He was sentenced to 9-months in custody – time he had already served. He was released on licence with restrictions, including being banned from his local area.
Dejon received legal aid but said ‘I just need to start buying lawyers and solicitors. The quality of your legal representation is better if you buy it 100%.’ He felt his solicitor was unprepared, requiring many adjournments. He recalls speaking in court only to confirm his name and date of birth.
Dejon felt the CPS constructed a gang narrative against him, drawing on stop-and-search history and prior incidents: “They just pick and choose the really bad parts to sell to the judge.” He described the process as stacked against him - “Fair doesn’t really exist… The law doesn’t make sense, “It really depends on who you are really…”
Peer research and co-production is central to this project. This has included the recruitment and training of 7 peer researchers, with up-to 5 working on the project at any one time. Our peer researchers have helped to design publicity and interview materials. They acted as co-interviewers in approximately half of the interviews, have participated in 4 co-analysis workshops to date and have facilitated 5 policy workshops…
Emerging themes and policy workshops
Our policy workshops provide a space for people with lived experience of the law, members of the judiciary, voluntary sector services and other relevant stakeholders to come together and co-produce reform recommendations. So far, we have delivered five policy workshops based on salient themes emerging from the research, with a sixth in planning/tbc. This includes:
Parents participation in public law proceedings (December 23):
Our first policy workshop was informed by findings from our family court pilot study. This focused on experiences of public law. Parents often described court hearings as traumatic. This included a sense of self-silencing, where individuals choose not to speak, either because they were told to remain quiet, or they did not understand the technical language being used by the legal professionals. Common among the female and minoritised ethnic parents, was a view that their voice was not deemed worthy or relevant to the proceedings. Interaction with the judge often had a lasting impact, with positive or supportive comments made to parents by the judge relayed to us verbatim during interviews.
Domestic abuse and how this is handled in family proceedings (public and private) (January 25):
A strong theme of interview accounts from our pilot study was court failures to support victims of domestic abuse. This finding was bolstered in our main study which also included parents who had lived experience of private law proceedings. Key themes included: women feeling unprepared before and during hearings and feeling unsafe due to failures to implement special measures; women having mixed experiences in their interactions with legal professionals; and a lack of understanding of cultural sensitivities in the system’s dealings with women from ethnic minority backgrounds. The below illustration, carried out live during the workshop, visually summarises the main themes:
Quality of criminal legal representation and perceptions of legal aid (February 25):
Nearly three quarters of our interviewees (73%) depended on legal aid to fund some or all of their representation. Interviewees repeatedly spoke of feeling that publicly funded representation put them at a disadvantage. In contrast, privately funded representation was often perceived as more vigorous, supportive and involving a continuity of care. Interviewees spoke of feeling let down by an overstretched and underfunded legal aid system, of a lack preparation and consistency in representation, and, in some cases, pressures to plead guilty. That latter was often perceived as being related to the need to save the court’s time. Participants also displayed an understanding of the pressure that legal professionals are under, and some described positive experiences of feeling that their lawyer had gone ‘above and beyond’ in their duties.
Special measures and other adaptations to court processes (September 25):
As noted above, in the family court, failures to implement special measures left women feeling unsafe. Some spoke of being discouraged from requesting special measures by lawyers due to the perception that ‘it would look better’ to face the perpetrator. When special measures were used, interviewees’ did not always feels safer, particularly if they could see or be seen by the perpetrator. Special measures could also lead to feelings of exclusion. For example, being bound by rules about how, where and when to enter the court building so that adjustments could be implemented sometimes led to a sense that the controlling environment women experienced in the home continued in the courthouse. Few interviewees who had been defendants in the criminal courts reported having received special measures or adjustments, which reflects existing research and commentary on this subject. Regardless of whether special adaptions had been implemented, many interviewees described being stymied by an overarching lack of understanding of the process, language or ‘jargon’ used, and eventual outcome.
Delays and impact (October 2025):
Waiting, delays and uncertainty – and the emotional, financial and practical – costs of this weighed heavily on the minds of our interviewees. This was a theme that arose prominently, regardless of the type of court attended (criminal or family); whether or not the interviewee had little or a lot of prior court experience; where they lived and their demographic characteristics. Our interviewees provided vivid accounts of the impact of waiting for case resolution in relation to contact with their children (in the family courts) and of extended periods of release under investigation, bail and remand (in the criminal courts). The salience of this theme is perhaps not surprising given unprecedented court backlogs, as highlighted in the recent Leveson Review (to which we submitted evidence).
Racialised use of stop and search (in planning/tbc):
Our final policy workshop will focus on the perceived racialised used of ‘stop and search’ among interviewees from minoritised ethnic groups, particularly Black young men. This research had not set out to explicitly examine the use of stop and search, however, as this theme emerged so strongly during our interviews, we would like to devote a final policy workshop to examining this in more depth.
Dissemination activities
We have carried out, and continue to carry out, a range of dissemination activities as part of this project. Here are some of our recent and upcoming activities:
Project film produced by Criminal Justice Alliance and Media Trust Films championing the value of experts by experience and co-production in research on the justice system. This was launched at the Birkbeck Festival of Social Sciences event in June 2025.
Paper: Hunter, G. and Campbell, N. “You’re not to speak unless you’re spoken to”: Parent voice in public law proceedings in England and Wales (2026 in press) Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law.
Submission to evidence reviews: Independent Review of the Criminal Courts (January 2025) and Co-Production Futures Inquiry (February 2025).
Research report/Main Public Output: on interview and review findings and summary for policy makers (early 2026)
Engagement with relevant bodies: to discuss project and emerging findings including HMCTS, Bar Standards Board, Law Society and Domestic Abuse Commissioner.
Presentation of findings at Annual SLSA Conference in March 2026.
Final SLSA blog post in early 2026.
For further information, please contact the ICPR guest blog series editor: Dr Amy Kirby
Comments