How easy are the magistrates’ courts to access, navigate and understand? This report seeks to answer that question, drawing on the experiences of 82 volunteer members of the public (‘courtwatchers’) observing their local magistrates’ courts over six months in 2023.

CourtWatch London was a mass court observation project where citizen volunteers observed magistrates’ court hearings and reported what they saw. From July to December 2023,  these 82 volunteer members of the public visited their local London magistrates’ courts armed with a booklet of observation forms and a small amount of training. Between them they observed over 1,100 hearings and reported on the treatment of defendants, the decision-making of magistrates and district judges, and their own experiences of attending the magistrates’ court as a public observer.

This report summarises courtwatchers’ experiences of observing magistrates’ court hearings and the barriers they faced. Their reflections on the justice they saw delivered there and specifically how young adult defendants were treated, are covered in two other reports ‘Our Sons and Daughters’ and ‘The Wild West’.

The courts are in principle open to any who want to observe, for whatever reason. Despite this, volunteers were sometimes severely constrained by a court system that has deprioritised public access. For example, courtwatchers could not actually hear court proceedings from many of the public galleries. The response from court staff towards volunteers bringing this to their attention ranged from assistance to puzzlement to hostility. The efforts of CourtWatch to alert senior London court representatives to the issue seemed to go unnoticed.