source: Russell Webster

published: 23 July 2026

Image Credit: sakhorn38 at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A new (21 July 2026) report from the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck and Revolving Doors uses narrative interviewing – storytelling – to help research participants talk about their experiences of the criminal and family courts and about their wider lifetime contacts with legal authorities.



The report: (Mis)trusting Justice? Personal stories of legal proceedings in the Criminal and Family Courts is based on 131 people who had been involved in judicial proceedings in the previous three years, either as a defendant in the criminal court (60%) or a party in public or private law proceedings in the family court (40%).

The research team (consisting of both academics and peer researchers) defined trust in justice as the expectation and subsequent experience of fair, unbiased and respectful treatment from legal authorities. They assessed level of trust in justice from participants’ stories about their lifetime contacts with legal authorities.

The substance of participants’ justice stories resonates with existing research and speaks to many recognised and long-standing concerns relating to access to justice, fair process and the current operation of the criminal and family courts.

However, they also offer more detailed and personal accounts of how individuals’ perceptions of the justice system are shaped over a lifetime, including by wider socio-demographic circumstances and community. Accounts broadly reflected the following themes:

1. Long-standing mistrust that was entrenched through recent court encounters
2. Prior trust that was undermined by recent encounters
3. Aspects of recent encounters – often cooccurring with negative factors – which helped to build or sustain trust or to ameliorate mistrust.

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