 Welcome everybody to the Cambridge Centre for Criminal Justice, the University of Cambridge's webinar this morning, on criminal justice, access, architecture and aspirations in a post COVID-19 future. I'm Nikki Bedfield. I'm a professor in the University of Cambridge, and I am really grateful to you for being here. Obviously, particularly grateful to our fabulous speakers who have. Well, we have Caroline and it's nearly midnight in Australia and Vincent got up early and it's seven o'clock in the morning in Canada. There are doubtless many of you who've come from around the world and we're really grateful. And you're here because it's a really, really important subject. Before we get into the subject in any detail. Let me start by offering a few other thanks. Dan Bates will be invisible to you. I imagine unless things go badly wrong. He's our technology expert who makes all of this possible and I'm really grateful to him. Lorna Cameron and it's entirely her enthusiasm for this really important subject which has led to today's webinar. She I have to say has done all the work in developing the program. And I'm sure that everybody here is really grateful to her for the way that she has orchestrated this really important debate. I come to the topic as an academic lawyer with some experience of practice, and I've been very concerned for a number of years about the way criminal justice appears to be shifting away from the traditional court. The pandemic has played a part, but the use of remote access technology or digital justice has been changing the face of justice the way people can participate in criminal justice for a number of years. And where I sit there's a real danger, a huge danger that short sighted economies may prove disastrous to the fairness of criminal justice, and indeed, and undermine the legitimacy of the system. I don't think that's an exaggeration. Today's focus is in some ways architectural exploring the effects of design on access to justice through the criminal courts, but to my mind it's very much more than this, and today's speakers will be raising fundamental questions about the meaning of justice. We hope to time manage the event to hear plenty from the audience, but feel very free to use the chat function for chat. So focus your questions for the panelists in the Q&A box and we will handle it as best we can. But I'm going to turn now straight away to Lorna, we're up to 70 participants which is great. I'm going to turn straight to Lorna to introduce the first panel. Over to you Lorna. In the first panel discussion, we are going to look at what fair access to justice means. This is what we're all sharing as a common denominator and in our attempts to make things work or improve things in all of our different areas of work. In this conversation we have two panellists, Dr Karen and Mackie who joins us from New South Wales in Australia. She's a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney Law School, teaching criminal law, civil and criminal procedure and digital criminology. And she's co-deputy director of the Sydney Institute for Criminology and has recognised her research into the technologies of justice, specifically empirical research into prisoners experiences of accessing justice from the custodial situation by audio visual links. Another speaker in this conversation is Professor Penny Cooper, who's a visiting professor at Birkbeck and a practicing barrister. Penny's research spans criminal and family and civil law and she has a particular interest in the adaptations which enable effective participation. Her expertise includes advocacy, cross-examination, witness familiarisation, expert evidence, ground rules hearings and special measures for vulnerable witnesses and defendants who I'm sure we all agree are one of the key interfaces that we need to look at in this big topic. And to start you off with your conversation I want to ask, and I think I'll direct this at Caroline initially, what is, what do you think access to justice is and is effective participation the same thing? How do we differentiate it for individuals and vulnerable people attending court? Thank you very much, Nikki and Lorna for inviting me today. And yes, I think that we can differentiate access to justice and effective participation. I think access to justice, I see that as more having actual access to the legal advice, to legal representation. For me it's about equality before the law, equality of that access. Whereas I guess I see effective participation is something more about the comprehension, actually having some understanding of the charges, for example, that have been brought against you in criminal justice if that's our focus. Having a comprehension of what actually what is occurring in the legal proceedings in the courtroom itself, having the ability to communicate effectively with the court, potentially with the judicial officer or at least be able to communicate with your legal representative if possible as well. So I do actually see a distinction between those two concepts. Penny, what's your thoughts on that? You're muted, Penny. You're muted. Thank you. Thank you as well for inviting me, Lorna, Nikki and Dan for your technical support. So, like Caroline, I think there is a difference. And as I was preparing for this seminar, my thoughts turned to an analogy, which I haven't used before. People think it's rubbish. I'd be grateful if they told me that. But I think the analogy is that the criminal justice system is a house, access to justice is getting to the front door. Can you afford to get there? Are you going to be let in once you get there? And then the effective participation is what happens once you're inside this house of criminal justice system. Do people ignore you? Or do they communicate clearly with you? Do you get to do what you want to do when you get there? And that might include sitting in a corner quietly and exercising your right not to say very much. So I do see a distinction, like Caroline does. Okay, so if we're talking about a difference between physical access and engagement, if you like, with the process once you get there, how do we reflect this in the interstitial spaces where we're using video linked hearings. So I'm talking about people who are in custody, who are in a video suite, perhaps, and accessing the court from that space. How do we allow those people to participate effectively? Well, I think Caroline, you've written the book on this, so I'm going to defer to you, but I might just start off by saying what we really need is research. And it's shocking, really, how little research there is, how little empirical research there is with lay participants, including defendants, not only about their participation when it's digitized, but also when it's actually in person. But I'm going to hand over to you, Caroline. Thank you, Penny. Yeah, look, I think it's, it's a really great question to ask. And I think we can't help but talk about this in terms of what's happened over the last 12 months with the pandemic and how for the very first time in living memory, I've got a quote from my Chief Justice of the New South Wales Supreme Courts of saying, first time in living memory where physical presence in court has effectively been prohibited due to that pandemic. And I think what we can see is that audio visual links have enabled the, the, you know, wheels of justice to continue turning to a certain extent in most jurisdictions, even though courts as well as prisons are very much gone into lockdown, at least in Australia. So we can sort of see that this technology has become very much a part of, you know, courtroom infrastructure. And it has enabled remote hearings, it has enabled the emergence of digital justice, I guess. However, I agree with Penny very much that we, this has kind of occurred. It's this amazing bit of a, you know, social experiment that's going on, this incredible large scale pilot has occurred fairly rapidly and without necessarily having all the knowledge and research that we need to have been done at this moment. So I do think that there have been, the courts have noticed that there have been major problems with people being able to effectively participate during the last 12 months or since March, I guess, since last, yeah, when the World Health Organization, you know, told us that there was actually a pandemic occurring. We can actually see that this emergent body of so-called coronavirus jurisprudence is showing the impacts on people's ability to participate. Now, of course, there's a lot of case law that suggests it's been great. And I think especially in civil jurisdictions, quite a lot of that has been able to continue and people have been able to effectively participate. But there have been a number of problems, particularly in criminal jurisdiction, where people have not been able to participate effectively. And courts have basically said to continue with this trial as a virtual trial or as an e-trial would actually result in an injustice and unfair proceeding to that particular defendant. So, yeah, it's really interesting to see this emergent coronavirus jurisprudence and what that tells us about access to justice and effective participation. Thank you. We've got a bit of time. I wondered if you would give me your thoughts now. We touched on this a few years ago when you were visiting and you spoke in Cambridge. And we talked about protocols, spatial and process protocols for the prison-linked spaces where prisoners are basically trying to connect with the court. And there were prison officers there who were saying that they had disaffected prisoners who weren't engaging. And of course Penny will know because of her specialisms that this is something that also affects people who are vulnerable in other ways because they simply cannot access effectively in a space that's distanced from the court. So what do you think now about the idea of protocols and formally creating these spaces in a way that is consistent and fair across the board because it's very much an ad hoc situation at the moment? Yeah. I mean, it's a massive job, isn't it? It's a massive reform that needs to take place. I think at the moment we're in a phase of necessity having become the mother of invention. So things like, for example, remote assessments of vulnerable witnesses and defendants have taken place by intermediaries who are assessing people's communication needs and abilities. They were perhaps skeptical at first, but have found ways to assess people's communication needs and abilities and then translate them into suggestions for adaptations. But then we come up against, I think, what at the moment is the most significant problem in the criminal justice system, which is the Crown Court. Having a real difficulty with jury trials trying to construct them in such a way that keeps people safe and socially distant. So now we've got on top of a system that was already short on money and suffering delays is now even shorter, if you like, on resources compared to what it needs, and the delays have become massive. So the challenge is absolutely huge. Just to say I don't have all the answers. Well, we're here to explore. None of us really has all the answers. Carolyn, any ideas? Yes. I mean, again, the same is occurring in Australia that there's been sort of massive delays are occurring in the criminal justice system in particular. It's interesting. If we're looking at court protocols, I've actually just finished drafting a journal article called glitching justice, and I'm very much focusing on the audio elements of the audio visual link. Whereas my earlier research has very much looked at the visual, but how about the audio. And it's really interesting. I've looked at case law from Australia, New Zealand and England and Wales to sort of try and capture a sense of what happens when the technology from a sonic point of view when it fails. And of course, I think there's massive problems for procedure when you cannot actually hear what people are saying when words disappear, you know, when the technology sort of glitches and things are lost. It corrupts transcripts, for example. But it also, we're now looking at these new protocols sort of perhaps coming back to your question, Lorna, those questions of new protocols in court. And of course, the the waving protocols are very much coming up. And, you know, when you look at the cases as a number of cases where it's evident that a defendant, for example, has been historically waving to try and say, I can't hear. And I think that's really unfortunate that there aren't sort of really good protocols in place to make sure that people can continuously hear, especially if they are a defendant and they're defending themselves in a criminal matter. Terrible audio issues, of course, with other parts of criminal procedure. You know, where do we place interpreters in a criminal in a remote criminal proceeding as well can be very, very difficult. But I think it's really important that we do look at the plight of defendants and certainly other vulnerable participants in the criminal justice system. These are the people who bear the brunt of massive changes to the criminal procedure. We have to sort of very much make sure that we can try and develop new protocols to ensure that they are included in the actual procedure as much as possible. But it's again, like Penny, I go, yeah, it's a bit of a work in progress at the moment. Thank you. I think it's something that we, we could look at and that it ought to be formalized across the board in different jurisdictions, obviously, but it's the only way for it to be fair. But of course, when you start looking at how you make it fair, you have to really understand what it is you're doing and what you're replacing. So if you're replacing an actual contact of a person in the space with that person in that space, and you're doing it over a video link. What is it exactly that you're trying to create a protocol for? Is it just that they can observe, or are they going to be supported in actual participation in the prisoners cases in prisons in their own trials. So those things need to be looked at. I'd like to, I can't see any questions from where I'm sitting. So I wonder, Nicky, do you have any questions for me, the audience that you might like to put here? I know that Caroline had a couple of slides. I think it would be very useful if she'd share her slides with us and hear a bit more. Okay. Can you see those slides? Okay. Oh, great. Yes, thank you. I was just going to quickly give a bit of background to my research, which you've already really done anyway. So I'll just sort of very quickly say that basically most of my research, since my PhD has focused on the prison endpoint of the audio visual links. I've spent a lot of time in prison talking to prisoners about their experience of using this technology to access justice to actually appear in remote courtrooms and for legal conferencing, or just to get other forms of legal advice, as well as a multitude of other reasons. These are just a couple of the publications that I've written that are relevant to what we're looking at today. I was, I just started mentioning about this article that I've drafted on glitching justice and video links, looking at the inflation of the courtroom with custodial spaces as well, and what does that mean in terms of justice. And then finally, I've also been writing, doing some research, again, very much informed by coronavirus jurisprudence, and looking at the impact of the prison lockdown, and what that can tell us perhaps of the move towards smart prisons, technologized prisons. So it's a little bit kind of off topic, but slightly on topic with what we're looking at because part of this journal article, I'm looking at the case law that's come out of the pandemic, and talking about the lockdowns of prisons and how that stopped obviously people from having physical in-person family visits, but more to the point of relevance to today is the stopping of in-person legal visits and what that actually means for people to be able to effectively prepare their defense and therefore to effectively participate in their own court matters. So it's sort of interesting that there's been various cases that have talked about the impact of that prison lockdown and being a barrier to effective participation and effective defense, and basically a judge in one court saying it may be more difficult to facilitate satisfactory interaction between the applicant and his defense team when you're only able to talk to your lawyer through the video link instead of actually having a face-to-face meeting in the prison. So that was just sort of one thing I wanted to mention, and then just finally I was also going to mention that I'm really delighted that I've been the recipient of an Australian Research Council award that I'll start on the 1st of July 2021, and that goes through to 2024. And this is a piece of research again that hopefully will come up with a few answers and a few recommendations that will hopefully inform further discussions like we're having today, very much looking at this notion of digital vulnerability. What is that? We have this very much digital justice that we are using in many parts of the world now, but of course we know that so many people, especially in criminal justice as well as in civil justice, are vulnerable people. And so I'm sort of very much interested in trying to understand what is this slippery term vulnerability and how does it interact with this digital realm that we're now faced with. So there are just a couple of the slides that I was going to mention today. Thank you. Penny, did you have a presentation you wanted to make on your recent research? I know that time is short, but if I may, I'll do this in a rather old fashioned way, and I'll just hold up a book. I'm not saying anything, but this book is the product of a research project, a major research project that was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and along with my colleagues at the Institute of Crime and Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck. We have produced what is an open access book called Participation in Courts and Tribunals, and you can get that from the Bristol University Press website. And I just remembered something as well about protocols and if I may have 30 seconds to mention this, I think it really is important that everyone, including maybe especially lawyers, think about why they're introducing the protocols because you hear of examples and you think, maybe a little more thought should go into that. One example is that, and this was actually in a civil arbitration, the lawyers wanted the witness to sit in front of a mirror so that they could see everything that was going on in the room just in case something went on toward quite what I don't know what they were expecting to happen, but that seems like quite an odd request for a protocol. And then the other one, which was adopted quite quickly, was removal of wigs and gowns for people accessing hearings in England and Wales from their home, which one can see some obvious reasons for that. The downside of it perhaps being that lay participants are wondering just who all these different people are. So is there some means of indicating through dress, maybe it's wearing bands, not gowns and wigs. I don't know, but a little bit more thought can go into these protocols because at the moment we are, yeah, I think we're just involved in a big experiment and doing these things quite quickly. Thank you Penny, I can vouch for that book everybody. I'll begin with a question at this point from our audience, which is a lot of the academic concern has of course been about access to justice and participation for vulnerable witnesses, especially the defendant. But Alistair Smith asks, I think a really important question, which are there are genuine challenges to advocacy through remote media, and a perception that remote arguments are less effective arguments. Has there been any research on how the trial process is less more effective when done remotely? Caroline raised the question as to whether the lawyer should be in the room with their client. I sat in on England and Welsh video parole board hearings when the lawyer would be with the client. And I have to say my instinctive response is to have the lawyer in a room with their client is much better than to have the person in prison or even in their own home totally isolated from their lawyer not knowing how they can talk to their lawyer. That does have a knock on effect to the quality of the advocacy. So I think this is a really interesting question and I interrupt to ask it and invite both Caroline and Penny to respond to it. I think it's an excellent question. I'm actually starting to do some research again going back into coronavirus jurisprudence. And unfortunately I haven't sort of finished that so I haven't got a really hard and fast answer at the moment but I'm particularly looking at the impacts on cross examination. So how can we actually cross examine witnesses if we're all in different parts of, you know, we're all completely separate. What is the process of trying to, you know, perhaps intimidates not quite the right word, but to have a little bit of coercive pressure on people when we know that actually witnesses at least in Australia apparently turning up from all sorts of places. So I heard an anecdote that a witness appeared while they're driving their truck. And, you know, how can you actually seriously try and cross examine somebody if they're just, you know, driving their truck and appearing in court at the same time. The actual spatial elements have totally gone from the gravitas of that courtroom and that ability to perhaps apply some level of acceptable coercion against a witness, I guess. So I'm sort of interested there have been some cases to suggest that the inability to cross examine successfully in a criminal justice realm may end up being an unfair trial to a defendant, but I haven't sort of got to anything further than that at the moment unfortunately. I agree with Caroline, Caroline, it's an excellent question and we need more research about it. The advocacy is one side of it, the impact on the witnesses is another side of it, and the impact on the fact finders and we need cross disciplinary research I think lawyers with psychologists first and foremost to understand what the difference is because at the moment it seems to me just anecdotally you've got people falling into a couple of camps one is the traditional way is best and we need to do it in person you just can't evaluate a witness for example in the same way over a remote link versus the other camp which is for digitization and we need to really meet somewhere in the middle with the benefit of research and research on things like trauma. I've been aware for a number of years from working with intermediaries that trauma is something that serious they've been seriously concerned about trying to educate people about because it affects memory it affects expressive communication it affects receptive communication. It affects the way someone presents all these things are really really important, but you know what what difference is it going to make if it's digitized, it could be better or it could be worse for some witness if we just don't know. Yes, advocacy we need more research on that but equally other aspects as well. I think the answer to the question is that we don't have a clear research yet this is an area which is astonishingly lacking in research to other questions to raise at this moment Carla clerk. It's I don't think it's so much a question as to point out that actually access to the internet is a precursor to access to justice. So we sure do have to remember that and then a really interesting question from Bradley read who I don't know who Bradley is and whether he works for HMP PS in England and Wales, pointing out that HMP the prison system in this country is investing 59 million in video conferencing suites 10 have been built, some as large as 16 rooms with another six more suites on the way. The rationale varies but a recent internal note states a number of benefits. These are all focused mostly on victims and prison security improvements. Little suggests that it's concerned with access or participation for defendants. How can defendant participation and physical access to court run be protected. Do legal protections need to be considered. I think it's such an interesting question and I hope lots of people from HMP PS will watch this recording later on, because it's not only the court service which needs to worry about this. Of course the prison system does. And I rather hope that this video conferencing suites were largely designed to allow visits for prisoners to talk to their families but I'm probably naive and wrong Caroline and Penny again. In Australia the default position is appearing by audio visual link for a vast range of criminal procedure now, pretty much until before the pandemic the only thing that was always going to be in person was a trial but of course that is now disappearing. Certainly the legislation in Australia typically suggests that you cannot opt in or opt out of using video audio visual link type technologies and I'm assuming it's probably very similar in England and Wales that they're. I'm not sure if there is any opt in or opt out provision in your legislation but I do think that at the moment that the system. Has you know is is I guess this necessarily sort of one size fits all and that's not going to work for a lot of people who don't have the resilience to actually be conducting their affairs using this type of technology. Certainly, in terms of civil jurisdiction, for example, and as one of the other attendees is mentioned, you need to have the internet. So again, there is when we've got people who are vulnerable for a range of reasons you know perhaps to do with their neurodiversity or their cognitive situation or whatever. You know there's a range of vulnerabilities that are there, but of course we have a class of people who are still digitally excluded as well so. Again, can those people opt in or opt out well they can't opt in unless they've got access to the internet and I think we can see that the internet now is a core utility in our 21st century life. It is as core as water and electricity and and a sewage system. So, yeah, again, I'm not quite sure if that sort of answers the question at all. So it looks like we've got a lot of work to do, all of us in all these different disciplines and practices and thank you both for discussing that particular point which I think revealed was very interesting open areas for future research. I need to move on now to the next discussion because we're running out of time already. The next discussion is about place place making and materiality. And I'd like to introduce Dr Alex Jeffrey, and Dr Vincent Dennell, which I may not have pronounced correctly Vincent sorry. This is a regional human geography at Cambridge University and as a political geographer as a particular interest in processes of state building the geographies of war crimes trials the contested nature of citizenship and divided societies. Dr Vincent is an SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Education and cancelling psychology, sorry, cancelling psychology at McGill University in Canada and a lecturer in the Faculty of Lords at the University of Sherbrooke. He holds a PhD in communication and a master of laws and his research focuses on issues related to witness testimony, credibility assessments, deception detection, non-verbal behaving courtrooms. Would you like to present yourself? Absolutely, thank you. Thanks a lot for organizing the session today. I've just been completely fascinated by the initial exchanges between Carolyn and Penny and kind of want to hear more about their work as well. Just to say a little bit about my particular position on some of these issues. I'm a human geographer and I'm interested in the role of law in consolidating post-conflict states and I've spent about a decade looking at the kind of politics of the creation of a new legal system in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in particular thinking about the creation of the court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which since 2005 has taken an increasing role in war crimes trials, particularly since the closure of the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. So this work has been interested in the nature of court spaces, the kind of politics around the creation of new legal codes, as well as a kind of wider set of social issues related to the associations and organizations that have assisted in the establishment of trials. So I published this work principally in a book last year called The Edge of Law in the Cambridge series in Law and Society. I would hold up a copy of the book where I'm not in our spare room rather than my office where the book is located. So just quickly, what did I say in this book to give a framing for the discussion? Well, I was interested in the question of how a new legal system is established in a divided and antagonistic political context. Through what mechanisms can its legitimacy be achieved? And materiality, which is one of the issues that we're thinking about today, was at the forefront of many of these questions, thinking about the kinds of buildings, bodies and materials through which law was practiced and how this plays a kind of ambiguous role in the communication of the legitimacy of law. And I'll just say three points and then I'll stop. They sort of intersect with the discussions we've had today so far. The first point to make was that the discourse that surrounded the establishment of the court of Bosnia was one of localizing the war crimes process which precisely puts this point about proximity at the front and center, the idea that localizing law was virtuous in the sense of it bringing law to the Bosnian people and challenged the idea of its remoteness while war crimes trials were being handled at the Hague. The narrative, this narrative was unsettled by the central role that was played by international actors in establishing the criminal code and in terms of initially in terms of the international judiciary. But the problems around localization were also kind of felt in the very architecture of law, localizing the legal process required locating the court within the contested urban landscape of contemporary Salievo, in doing so the site of the court which is a former army barracks was kind of highly contested it was itself the site of war crimes during the conflict in the 1990s. So far from the experience of say post apartheid South Africa where Carol Clarkson speaks of new courts as aesthetic acts that embed a new political system rather the court has somewhat characterized a continuing ethnic division that shapes Bosnian politics and it's very materiality and architecture was drawn into those those discussions. Um, secondly, you know, the work has highlighted the importance of thinking of materiality beyond fixed notions of place and thinking about and the discussion today has illuminated this really kind of admirably already the idea that actually the practice of law is distributed through a whole set of infrastructures material and dematerial embodied and disembodied that that allow it to be reproduced and secure its its legitimacy. One of the aspects of the book is to think about the distinction between invited and invented spaces of justice so where kind of the formal court space meets the much more informal sites where NGOs are trying to enroll participants within the core process. And the final point I want to make and I'll stop was about the kind of questions around access to justice and effective participation precisely where we where we started today that's actually the practice of attending trials in person wasn't clearly wasn't always virtuous or or welcomed as it was expected in the more celebratory accounts of localizing war crimes trials. Across the research and the book goes into some detail the particularly concerns around the retraumatizing effect of having to give witness testimony the lack of psychological support for witnesses. Disatisfaction also around the leniency of sentences and how that was kind of performed within court space and the celebration of celebratory acts by by defendants. You know, in a sense it points to the limits of a attributive legal system and meeting expectations of justice amongst traumatized communities this visibility of justice doesn't always mean justice is being seen to be done and I'll end my comments there. Thank you. I have lots to say about that but actually I'm going to let Vincent present his work because I think it's, it's where you're, where both of your, your areas can combine that I think we're going to get some really interesting discussion. So Vincent, would you like to present your work. Thank you very much Lorna and thank you Nikki for the invitation. I'm very grateful to be here today. Yeah, so in the in the past, quite a few years now I've been working and studying the impact of non verbal communication in courtrooms it started with my masters of law, where I looked at court judgment and moments where judges refer to non verbal behaviors. And the conclusion that I had made in that masters of law was that, well when non verbal communication is mentioned in court judgments. There are many times where the way it is interpreted is not totally in accordance with scientific research. In other words, there is a lot of wrong beliefs and stereotypes that are associated with non verbal behavior. And then, after the masters of law I looked at in my PhD in communication I looked at deception in court and essentially what I looked at was deception judgments. Perjury judgment sorry, where judges have to decide if a witness lied or not in a previous trial. And what came out of the data was that again when it comes to deception judgment so when judges have to decide if a witness lied or not there's also a lot of bias and stereotypes that are used in deciding if someone is truthful or not. And besides, between the masters of law and the PhD in communication I really try to focus on the impact of non verbal communication in courtrooms. And as some of you probably know there are thousands of peer reviewed publications on non verbal communication non verbal communication is a very very very large field of research. And unfortunately, it is the impact of non verbal communication in courtroom is not studied a lot. And with the virtual trials that are now getting more and more popular, it brings back that question which was in the past years really understudied. So what is non verbal communication and how it affect the courtroom interaction what is the impact on the judge on the witness. What is the impact on the lawyers. That brings back first and foremost the question what is non verbal communication and not communication essentially refers to communication without words so that means it means yes design arrangement of courts and courtrooms, the appearance features of witness of judge of lawyers of defendants security guard court clerks, the non verbal cues the behavior. So what is the role of all that. What does the literature and non verbal communication says about the impact of behavior. Well, behavior help us display effect reveal attitudes, regulate interaction, manage impression exert interpersonal control, and I would like to focus on two function that are very important in court, non verbal communication plays a huge role in creating empathy on the one side. And on the other side, non verbal communication also play a huge role in creating authority. And there's a fine line in the, in the, in the, in empathy between empathy and authority, for example, the judge on the, on, on, on one side, there's need to be some authority in all the trial proceeds. But on the other side, the judge also has to show empathy for example when victim has to testify in a way, in a way so with all, with all the other constraint but if you want someone to speak and explain the an experience, showing some kind of empathy is very important for that the person can and will disclose information. One thing that is very, very important on the also to be aware of is that all those functions. Non verbal communication is very important, but please people have to stop thinking about non verbal communication, just as a way to detect lies. There's no cues, non verbal cues to detect lies. This is science fiction. So let's forget the impact of non verbal communication to detect lies. Let's just forget that and think about all the other functions of non verbal communication, in fact, we're relating attitudes and so on and so forth. The other thing that is important about non verbal communication that I would bring to the table for discussion is that most of the non verbal cues and behaviors and features, we all appreciate that spontaneously. On the daily basis we use non verbal communication in our interaction, it regulates our interaction, it help us understand each other, but all most of that is done very spontaneously. And the final thing that I would like to mention is that, well, the trial is a act of communication. So this is really, really important. Judges communicated with the witness, witness communicate with the judge lawyers communicate with the witness, and so on and so forth the public can see trial or hear about trials. These are all acts of communication. If you remove the non verbal communication from the equation. It changes the act of communication. And how does it change it? Well, what research shows about non verbal communication is that it is extremely important in our daily function of understanding each other. Additionally, with virtual trials, as with trials in person, there is again I want to mention there's not a lot of research on non verbal communication in courtrooms. Well, if virtual trials now begin to be more and more popular. My intuition tells me that more and more researcher will look at the impact of non verbal communication. And this event today is an illustration of this impact that is getting more and more attention. And please don't take my words as an opposition to virtual trials. It's just that I would, I and other researcher would probably like to minimize the collateral damage of virtual trials that we might not be aware of today because of lack of research. So that's what I would like to say for the moment. Thank you Vincent that was most illuminating. There is commonality between your areas of expertise. And I'm particularly look at the intangible cultural heritage of courts. And that's because I need to find a way to understand how the world of law is actually communicated and how justice is accessed in space or virtual space or any kind of space in order to look at the next iteration of courts if you like that are coming sooner than we think. So, for both of you, I'd like you to discuss. Very briefly, whether you think materiality is a form of non verbal communication, given that we are talking about the difference between the physical court and interface if you like between society whatever is going on in that society whether it's in a war torn civilization or or an established democracy. And that interface at the moment is represented by a physical court building and people are reacting relating to that along with all of its material qualities, which all communicated different levels in different ways. So, is that Vincent do you think a form of non verbal communication. Yeah, thank you Lorna for the question. This is my opinion, based on the knowledge that I have read the peer reviews that I read in the past, but courtrooms. Court, the court for the physical environment where the witness is testifying where the trials happen is non verbal communication. In a way, well, researcher could argue that, well, there's not the element of intention, something of an intention similar to gestures or facial expressions, but still the courts, the place where witness testify the place where the judge sits so a little bit in the front of the room, a little bit up. These are all elements of non verbal communication, which creates impressions and communicates information to everyone in the room and the public. Yeah, I completely agree with that. And, you know, I've been hugely influenced by people's work who's on the panel and and Linda Mark ah his work on on legal architecture, you know, which, which conveys precisely this point that the organization of court spaces of courtrooms is both both reflects and communicates certain social attitudes towards towards law and and towards the organization of authority and so on and so we get these kind of micro geographies of court spaces, you know that are as as Vincent just mentioned, you know, they're very organized have certain sort of fixed settings that that that reflects certain attitudes towards participation in court court processes, but also you know as reflecting on you the actual the actual legal the court buildings themselves they are, they are symbolic buildings that are trying to convey certain certain ideas of authority so they are very much communicative devices, albeit not textual or verbal but architectural. Okay, I think we have some questions, which we may like to make it would you like to go to questions. The questions that we have in the questions and answers are actually more referring back to the last session so far. So I was going to bring in Jodie Blackstock so important questions later on. Yeah, I suppose actually we can bring it into this. One of the things which is wonderful about this discussion is that we all come from different starting points, and we learn other people's languages. So Alex just talking there about micro geographies and so on is new. And unusual language for me as a criminal lawyer through and through what Jodie Blackstock said in her comment was partly to bring attention to the justice, the NGO justices virtual trial, and the test that they did their feedback was that wigs and gowns should be worn to aid the sense of solemnity. It's a really interesting question whether we want to have wigs and gowns I think in courts the arguments are difficult to weigh up. So please do have a look at the academic evaluation by Linda McGarney who has just been mentioned now, and Emma Ryden who's going to be speaking in a minute. This has not been adopted is yet because of reluctance to separate participants, but the Scottish example of having different hearings where jurors are in a separate setting seems to be working as a solution. Do speakers have any views on this well now this is an informal seminar session I'd be very happy of the earlier speakers wanted to come back, but I think I'll dump it straight on Alex because of his micro geographies I don't quite understand what happens when you have a court, which is then chopped up into different courts. So you are not sure whether it counts as a micro geography. If you have the courtroom with some of the participants in one room linked by video links to other participants in another room, and of course the public might be back in their own homes. I don't know who would like to comment on Jodie's very useful comments. Well just to say just to say a couple of words, and I think it's it adds complexity to my micro geographies. And I think this idea of, you know, clearly it introduces a different kind of psychology to the idea of place and people's kind of shared experience if we have these mediation through video links. I'm just to throw into the discussion about solemnity I'm just, I'm always really interested in this question of the role of court spaces and ideas of gravitas and so on. There are ways in which this is, you know, can flow into kind of ideas of the courts as degradation ceremonies or that they have certain kind of roles in changing the status of individuals through that through their their enactment and so I'm just kind of. Yeah, I'm kind of weighing up to some of these issues myself so I'm not certain. And it's going to be discussed in some more detail in the next discussion and where Emma and I have a chat about that. I hope. Can I chuck chuck in at this moment Richard Posner's point which seems to be relevant. If policy in different adversarial jurisdictions is seeking to embed virtual hearings, especially in trials. Then perhaps we should know whether access to justice and public confidence would be better shaped through an inquisitorial system of justice in criminal law. And he's inviting views there. And of course the first starting point has to be what we mean by inquisitorial as opposed to adversarial jurisdictions because certainly in Europe. We have been growing more similar in many ways and borrowing in bits from different systems so I think we can't see pure adversarial or pure inquisitorial models. But I do think it's a really important question in relation to what we're talking about today and virtual courts, whether we have to change the whole way we think about the order of questioning the relative power and status of the performance and Alex and Vincent in particular would you like to respond to that. Yes. Well that's a point that I never thought about, but it makes total sense to think to reflect on this possibilities because yes, virtual trials changes the old interaction. And if it changes the old interaction why not question the possibility of what would be best for the justice system. I don't have an answer yet, but really it brings to my mind something that I really never thought about. And the judge being more questioning more asking more questions. Would it be, would it be better. I'll have to have a think about that. That's very, very interesting idea. Never, never pass to my mind. There's actually one point and it may, yeah, it may or may not be relevant but but, you know, the question is allied to it to the kind of broader question of kind of lay participation in the in the kind of adversarial trial process and the use of the use of and I think that there is that the challenge of not just kind of virtual hearings but increasing complexity of evidence in cases that that then creates the challenge of introduce of jury trials and so I think while it's slightly off topic I think it does kind of start to stray into some of those some of those kind of wider questions of the the admissibility of certain forms of evidence. You know what what kind of testimony is is considered appropriate testimony for for viewing by by juries and being weighed up appropriately by juries so yeah I think it's an interesting area of discussion. There's going to be a balance between what's leading and what's following, you know, are we redesigning in order to create a better a better experience, or are we going to let the technology lead us and basically dictate what we end up doing. So, those that's why we need research right now because we can't really say for sure what we're losing what we're gaining. That's what I take. And that's my position. But thank you both for that, that discussion, and I think Carolyn might be wanting to come in with a point on that last question are you Carolyn I saw you come back into real life so I thought you might want to comment. So, it was actually the earlier question. Looking at the, the, sorry, whereas it's disappeared on me. Looking at the solemnity of the actual court that that particular question about the hybrid hearings and going back to that justice report as well. And I was purely wanted to make a comment actually the number of cases at least in Australia perhaps they're better better behaved in England and Wales but in Australia there's been so many cases of people acting in a very disinhibited manner in videos in video links so they're sort of appearing from the custodial suite. There's been, you know cases of people deciding to, you know, take their clothes off or turn their back to the to the judge. And so it's really interesting, the difficulties in trying to manage, which also ties in with someone else's question I think that the problems of trying to manage a virtual court when everyone is spread out in different places. And where you're not immersed in that gravitas. You feel perhaps like we all do online that you can sort of feel a little bit free to act as you want to do and you don't necessarily feel that you're subject to the authority of the court so I think it can be quite difficult. In these situations so I just wanted to actually address that earlier question as well that sense of solemnity and how that's perhaps missing. I have a comment from a judge in Quebec who says, this is Pierre Gagnon, I'm not sure if I've pronounced that correctly. He says he hasn't experienced major drawbacks gathering evidence and submissions in the course of virtual hearings, however he is concerned that some participants may come out believing that they didn't get a real complete and fair hearing. So his very limited solution he admits is to open a second camera targeting his face, which sounds some like something that we recognize from the justice virtual trial experiment. So if you'd like to look that up I think you might find something interesting there. But thank you. And Nikki is going to take over now because it would be somewhat self serving to introduce myself. Penny you came back to life also did you want to last comment on that last session or are you simply listening and you need to unmute yourself. It was a very quick comment and that comment from the judge in Quebec preempted what I was about to say because we heard Caroline talk about people feeling disinhibited but I think they can feel disenfranchised as well so that they're not participating but more of a feeling of justice is being done to them, especially if it's a remote hearing which you do get remote sorry a hybrid hearing where you get the lawyers for example in the courtroom with the judge but the hybrid part of it is that other people like witnesses and parties are dialing in remotely so you could see that disinhibition disenfranchisement coming to the fore perhaps as a result of that that's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you. Well, we will then move on to our third section of our debate today. I'm really pleased that the discussions the presentations are developing beautifully there are some really interesting questions coming. Please read his second input on that and then anonymous attendee who raises the really important point about what anonymous attendee sees as uncritical support from judges court officials and legal journalists. Well, that's what I think we academics have got a duty to do which is to try and make the debate sufficiently interesting to engage those who are not yet engaged with the debate. So in this section, it's great pleasure to introduce Emma Rowden and sort of introduce Lorna but she's already been well visible already. Emma has been less visible today but very visible in the discussion of this topic. She will, I hope I'm not going to introduce you at any length Emma I hope you will introduce yourself. I'm really pleased to see you here today. You're now based in England at Oxford Brooks University having yourself been in Australia for many years, and it's really useful to have your contribution. I'll say nothing more about Norna today she's going to speak second in this section and can of course put herself more in context in relation to her work as an architect, a senior lecturer in architecture and design at University of Lincoln and as a PhD student. It's a really interesting position to be in I think but we'll start by inviting Emma to say what you want to say and to comment in what you've already heard this afternoon. Hi, can everyone. Oh thank you. Can everyone hear me okay. I'm just going to share a few slides with you just because I find them the visual helpful to coming from an architectural background can everyone just see the screen I have, which has the PDF up. Is that visible to everyone. Yeah. So yeah, thank you so much for that wonderful introduction Nikki and and thank you to both you and Lorna for hosting today obviously that given this topic is very near to my heart. I've been looking at this area for the last 10 years or so plus. And so, yeah, it's one that I find endlessly fascinating and interesting and obviously it's become very topical given given the last years developments. So just to introduce my background so effectively I've been looking at this area for a while now and it all sort of started off with the gateways to justice project which I'll talk to you a little bit about which, like Carolyn's work in in prisons that was sort of the major project that I worked on in this area that provides the bulk of my knowledge really and expertise in this area but I've also been involved with Carolyn with some other colleagues and a number of different projects. To involved looking at the, how we might improve video linked interactions for people on remind and I'll talk a little bit about those those two projects. And then also in the UK. Linda Mulkey, a long term collaborator and I've just recently won a bid and the UK I covered 19 rapid response grant for the supporting justice online project which again I'll talk to you a little bit about. And also, I'll talk briefly about the work we did with justice which Jodie is also mentioned earlier. So instead of some further reading the book Linda and I produced recently the Democratic courthouse which looks at the last sort of 50 odd years of court design in the UK. And really it sort of looks at the moment just before now where the courts for the last sort of, but I think since the early 2010s have been undergoing this rapid modernization project which covert is really, you know, made it sort of more urgent that this sort of come to its fruition, but but effectively we looked at the sort of the moment before all this when when the UK was investing in in the infrastructure of courthouses that was the last big monumental building program so book really examines that and the kind of lessons we can learn from the mistakes I think really that were made during that era. In terms of how we can make our courts more more democratic and then just some other research, other publications that came from the gateways to justice project really highlighting two areas that hadn't really been looked at much in the literature at all which is the impact of audio visual links on experts and the idea of an expert performing their expertise on a video link and a lot of the issues that Vincent talked about earlier about nonverbal communication. The fact that people demonstrate their expertise through non, but you know the way they demonstrate things through their hands and through then then on verbal communication. That's something that we we address in that paper and then another one with my colleague and Wallace on remote judging and again an area that hadn't been looked at much at all, which is the impact of video links on on the work of judges and so just, you know, in case you're interested. And then I guess the third paper I wanted to highlight here was the distributed courts and legitimacy paper which actually talks more to the issues that this particular panel is talking about today sort of what do we lose when we lose the courthouse when we move into this kind of virtual scenario. Some other things I just wanted to point out was the sort of scope of the gateways project and the fact that we produce some design and operational guidelines. Out of that work that's freely available online. And then just to highlight some of the work that Carolyn and I did together with some colleagues at UTS, looking at how to improve the court experience for those on remind in terms of the preparation that you give to them for the remote encounter and how that might actually improve, prove things and that included just some basic information about what is AVL who's who in the courtroom and how are you going to appear in the court. And that included some pre connection videos and some, I guess, sort of training videos introducing what what the what the remote encounter would be like. And that sort of work is sort of, sort of carried forward now, both in terms of looking at the justice is jury, virtual jury trial, which Jodi mentioned earlier really encourage you to have a look at it. I mean, one of the things that I found quite groundbreaking about it was what an even level playing field that that this a lot of the issues that have been raised in my previous research about the sort of issues which I'll talk a bit about in a minute seem to be sort of in a way by putting everybody remotely so that there isn't an us and them sort of us in the courtroom and them who aren't in the courtroom who are beaming in remotely, but that it did create a very different kind of geography and I think that's something that Alex might be interested to look at in terms of his micro geographies. So yeah, for those of you who who haven't looked at that that research and that evaluation. I recommend you have a look at it and these are the three reports that Linda and when and I produced on the back of that. And then just going forward this new project that we're looking at in terms of the supporting online justice project. And where we're looking with we're sort of shifting the focus away from criminal courts and looking more at family courts and tribunals and, and the ways in which we might better educate lay people through that kind of audio visual approach. In terms of how to improve their kind of skills and in their capacity to engage and effectively participate in an online setting. In terms of my introduction maybe I've got a few more slides that maybe when we get to the sort of the bulk of what it is we're talking about today. I'll hand it over to you for for a little bit to introduce yourself and Sure. Thank you. And I've been chatting for a few years and she's been incredibly supportive of my shifting career into academia and and she's given me a lot of very good advice, which I've tried very hard to follow. And my introduction will be very short because I'm relatively new to academia so I don't have a huge wealth of published work behind me that I can draw on. So I'm just going to say what I have been doing recently. So as you know my background as an architecture and for many years I've been in practice designing interventions in existing buildings to give them new life and purpose. My thoughts are amongst the most important group of public buildings to show us how buildings carrying convey societal meanings. They're read by individuals who use them and through that process they contribute to the sense of place that exists in these very important public buildings. My research studies the role that courts and courthouses play as the buildings and as places which express the complex that symbiotic relationship between the individual and the state. It's an expression of the law of law to the society it serves this relationship is tested through both architectural analysis and socio legal approaches in my research and recently through the applied design process to develop interventions to enable jury trials to resume in the height of the pandemic crisis last year. This was achieved through a judicial working group led by Judge Guy Cole QC recorder of leaves and the public published work was entitled the Nightingale Courts report. It was adopted by HNCTS and now that work underpins their efforts to adapt the courts estate to cope with the effects of the pandemic on the very high back load case case outstanding cases. So the work to identify host buildings for the new Nightingale Courts allowed me to contribute my design expertise to help resolve the problem of how to reinstate jury trials and to provide a model for courts of different levels of security and in different cluster arrangements to be located in host buildings, such as the NAC theatres lecture halls cathedral complexes and Guild Halls across England and Wales. This is a complex design challenge. And it required that I take a base model on which to generate the design. And this is not an approach that researchers normally take, but this is an approach I would take in practice if I was faced with this particular kind of problem. So identified the individual juror as the core unit for the model and designed a safe three dimensional space for that person, according to the two meter and one meter plus distancing rules. So then extrapolated to a full jury in various arrangements in consultation with the lawyers, who I was working with, and eventually to the entire courtroom through examining each individual required for the trial to be staged is an iterative design process and required that each participant was considered in turn their space was identical to each other's and as well safe access to that space. And the choreography within the courtroom was considered in my new detail and managed to expose individual to the least possible risk in moving around the courtroom and video link technology and access spaces were integrated into the model on the same basis. So I could go on about this, because there's a lot, a lot of work that went into it, but basically very complex courtroom planning was simplified enough to allow easy and access. space requirements to be matched potential host buildings and the approach placed every individual player in the court on an equal basis with each other. This provided a basic model for a courtroom. Which has potential I think to, to develop as a model for future courts, because it's stripped out all of the, all of the sort of design is never neutral. So whatever courts we have nothing in them is neutral. It's all there for a reason or has something to say, and it all contributes to the way that people read that space. So when you start from scratch, you don't have any of that to deal with and just have to look at the actual core function of that space and how people are going to read that space and interact with it. And so I'm not going to say any more about that right now. I'm going to ask Emma about her virtual jury experiment that she ran with justice and the conclusions that she came to with Linda in the reports and ask, you know, can we really can we do that physical court spaces all together? What is your view on that now that you've run that experiment? Thanks. Thanks, Lorna. Well, first of all, I should just clarify, it was actually Justice's experiment that we were very kindly asked to come and come and review and critique and contribute towards in some way. But I did find it really a fascinating project to be involved with because as I said earlier, a lot of the critiques I'd been levelling it at the video conferencing process I found weren't necessarily completely addressed by this new format, but in some ways they threw up kind of new possibilities and particularly this notion of the us and them, you know, the us in the courtroom and the feeling like the poor cousins who are having to video link and some of the issues that that that was raised. It gets sort of everybody's sort of on the same kind of form everybody's sort of visually represented on screen, not, you know, a sort of a central hub. But then, you know, some of the things that, you know, we've been complaining about or also still still occurring. And I think, you know, in terms of in terms of some of those issues, I'll just for those of you aren't familiar with my my research to date, I just wanted to sort of raise some of these points. So, so one of the questions you asked Lorna is about sort of what is the physical court, what does it do? What does it do that provides that is important to us and is there a potential for this to be missing in the virtual or video link spaces. And again, you know, if we think well you know what is needed for a courtroom, you know, if we go back to sort of some of the drawings I did for Linda's book, you know that really the pre Democratic courts there were these sort of, you know, it was a all basically people just got bits of furniture together. And, and if we think about what a court is in terms of how it sort of shifted over time in our head we're sort of thinking our courthouse has these sort of symbolic things attached to it but effectively it's people coming together in a space and determining something on behalf of community. And so really actually if you if you forget about the sort of the architecture itself, what it needs is buy in it is everybody to be buying into this experience that we are all coming together and, and we're coming and making a collective decision. Now how do we get that by and what part of it's creating the sense of legitimacy and and part of it is creating a sense of that the speech acts that happen in the setting are going to have an effect. And that through all sorts of, of, of, you know, as theorists might talk about this in terms of a network of network of relations and assemblage that that we give sort of weight or prominence or some kind of as a collective we all agree that the judge when when they they make an approximation, you know that this is occurring that that has some weight outside of this setting. So the way if we think about, you know, part of that is about this sort of environmental behavioural cues but a lot of it. Sorry, if I got is about the creation of this right of passage this liminal zone where the stuff that happens within a court space, however defined whether it's virtually or whether it's actually in a, in a physical setting that something's going on there people have particular roles and, and stuff that happens in that setting has an impact outside of it. And part of the reason part of what we do that is the creation of what's called a civic space in good source terms, that there's, you know, and that that's in terms of architecture can happen in all these sorts of ways in where we look at sort of a ceremonial space we look at and ceremony again doesn't necessarily need to be in the architecture itself it can be inhabited in the rituals that can be have it in dress. There are all sorts of other kind of signifiers that can stand in. So I mean when I was doing my research and talking to judges, you know I spoke to one land environment court judge who talked about going out on site and recreating the kind of sense of a court through the way they spoke to people through the way they explained what was going on. So there are sort of different, different ways in which the notion of court can be created that is devoid of space, you know so I think there is some potential in the virtual setting for this to be recreated but we might lean more on these other tools that are disposed of we might lean more on dress we might lean more on, you know, the background the backdrop trust surroundings we might lean more on the kind of rituals and protocols we set up for establishing that formal setting this civic space. And I guess but we don't want to lose what happens in the court space you know that part of it is a formal arrangement of people where people know their roles and know what happens in this communal organization but it's also about the environmental cues that that that people are triggered to have particular behaviors. And that's sort of really what the courthouse in a way I think traditionally has sort of stood in for for us understanding those relationships between players but also in terms of triggering formal behavior, which is why when we've been talking about video links and people sort of maybe not not really appreciating that they're in a court space or appreciating that they have to behave in a particular way because when they're having these kind of conflated behavioral cues. And as you see here we've got the discrete court and the remote space. Well actually if you're in a remote space often you're getting this kind of confliction between a formal setting that you're looking in at, and this kind of, you know, you know haphazard space that you happen to be in whether it's you know, at the moment, sort of I'm in my office, or, or, you know, somebody else in has appeared, you know, in a magistrates court as a expert witnesses a doctor but from the sort of office tea from the from the hospital tea you know so sort of seeing people off on the side so there are all sorts of ways in which the ways in which the video linked encounter can sort of transform some of these norms it's up to us to kind of re redesign in a way what is it that we're leaning on to create that sense of community values that are that are creating that sense of legitimacy of the of the court encounter. I think I'll leave it there really. Thank you. One of the things I wanted to talk about was, given all that and given given our approaches. Do you think the courts have the power to be transformative. Or are we simply required to make the neutral backdrops to show that's being played out by all different players that are involved. The architecture is never neutral as you know absolutely and look some of my work in Australia I think, you know, the sort of ideas I've been been exploring in terms of particularly, you know, because in a way the court should be emblematic about what a country wants to say about it or what a what a sort of jurisdiction wants to say about itself, both to, to basically to its citizens you know what values as a community do we want to uphold and how do we express ourselves and so, you know when we see in Australia you have some new court buildings where Aboriginal artists are invited in to sort of paint paint the walls of the court space, or you have, you know, in a sort of similar example, you know in terms of the use of art. You know, in a magistrates court a particular a story from a particular magistrate who worked, worked in the area spoke of a young Aboriginal boy who'd gone through a sort of rehabilitation program and gifted to the court, an artwork that they had done you know people in the court now sit underneath this artwork that this person had had delivered to the court so there is I think a great transformative potential of courts for, for jurisdictions to reimagine themselves but also to kind of keep that dialogue with its secondary about what is important you know what is, what are the values that we want to be upholding, you know, in, in our justice system. So, absolutely I think there is a potential transformative power of, of the courts and I guess that becomes more challenging perhaps when you're distributing that space when you don't having an architect coming in there and saying okay this is what the court needs to look like. Everybody's sort of being connected but I think again as I say you know if you look at this as a network of symbolism, you know, might be in the way in which we relate to each other that respect is amorphous you know it's not necessarily something that that is has to be expressed only in bricks and mortar, it's also how we treat each other, how we denote dignity and respect, and those sorts of things can be I guess expressed in multiple ways. Yeah. One example I can think of is the Supreme Court in South Africa where they constructed the new course out of the remains of one of the most notorious prisons from the apartheid period so a lot of the graffiti from the prisoners are still on the walls the steel they're still there, and it's in the same place. So, it's in the landscape that was, you know, a result of those effects. So it can be read in a particular way and I think Alex, your experience in Bosnia Sarajevo was, is probably similar do you have anything to add. No, no, not at all. I mean, yes, it is it is very, very similar just just listening with real interest to this exchange I mean I think the that in some senses it's kind of the polar opposite I think in the case of in Bosnia, the community we're trying to draw on precisely you know any of the point you're making about about the kind of possibility of architecture to embed a new and you know unified legal system. Unfortunately, you know in the kind of in the year since you know national politicians have have sought to kind of re-inject kind of forms of antagonism through interpreting the architecture in different ways, you know, so, so it's the idea of the kind of the kind of ideal that this would establish a unified political and legal system but but actually through interpretation and particularly through the issue that it was the site of of war crimes perpetrated against Serb prisoners of war, and this this led to a kind of reinterpretation and a suggestion that this was, in some senses, biased against kind of the Serb community so it's kind of interesting that symbolism I suppose can cut both ways. Sorry. That's why I was just going to take on that one. It's fine. I was just going to say that's also a temporal aspect to all of this. So, whatever you create at any one point in time, it has to be capable of changing and adapting and continuing to be a reflection of aspirations for justice in in that context. And quite often these courtrooms, these court buildings have lived a very long time and seen an awful lot of history in their context and they, but yet they still seem to hold some power, which is interesting because quite often particularly in Ireland with the near Georgian courts which are effectively colonial architecture in place in a position of authority over a subject nation at the time. They are revered buildings and they're still loved and they're still used because they have translated themselves through time and they've been embodied with that by the people who use them. So that's that's another important aspect. Sorry, Emma, what were you going to say. No, no, sorry, I was just going to say rejoined it to Alex's point I think absolutely and I think you know what the transformative power I believe is completely undercut if those if the symbol isn't matched by the kind of you know the on the ground relationships and the changes politically so I mean you know until we have, you know, more Aboriginal people represented, you know, within our judiciary and until we have you know lower rates of more equal equal rates of incarceration between, you know, the different kind of groups more proportional to actually, you know what the population is then, you know, and lower deaths in custody and things like that so until that kind of real justice happens then the in a way that the transformative potential is undercut really so I think, you know those things need to be in concert really. Fascinating and very enlightening. I would like to hand back to Nikki now because I think we need to go to the next discussion unless you want to go through some questions Nikki. Well, we're well within our time which is very useful so I don't know that either of you two speakers want to say more in relation to this session, but I will broaden it out now for the last half hour before we end this session. So, where do we stand I think what is very interesting as color clerk has said appropriate background virtual or not is a good start our discussion moved on in that last group to different shapes of the courthouse. I've been very lucky in my career as many people of my generation and my sort of well to have traveled quite a lot, and I have always visited courts even on holiday wherever I am. And it is extraordinary how different our courts are and how within one jurisdiction, the Supreme Court and the local magistrates court or equivalent will be giving a very, very different message, partly historical. Well, I just said something about people loving their courts in Ireland well it depends probably who you ask whether they love their courts or not. And there are many, many issues in relation to court architecture where you put the judge and whether he has a light on him, as we heard earlier on, and moving the discussion away from what court should look like to the advantages and disadvantages of digital justice. The discussion is of course fantastically interesting at a million levels, not least because it's a digital discussion and shows the advantages and disadvantages of invisibility, or in relation to this encounter that we're having, which is very different from the encounter that we would have if we were all in the same room, but we never would be all in the same room. So aren't we lucky. I think my agenda in welcoming Lawner's proposal that we had this webinar today was very much to get us to think about, there are enormous things happening out there. Digital justice is moving really, really fast. And have we stopped and thought enough about the implications, and that we've encouraged everybody in this last session to think a little bit about what it is that future research should be looking at. I'm really grateful that everybody who's taken part today has agreed that we record this session. It will therefore sit on the Centre for Criminal Justice's website, and I hope we'll get lots and lots of hits. There will also be, I think, on YouTube, we'll announce where it's available, but in my previous experience of the webinars that we've been putting on in the last year, they have attracted an enormous amount of attention afterwards, as well as on the actual day of the discussion. So in this last section, I'm going to invite everybody who's spoken here today to have two or three minutes, not just a word, but a bit more than a word, on where they really want future research to focus. I think there have been some quite subtle messages today from the different directions that we come at the problem from, but let me straight away pass it back to all of you to have a word. Now we haven't choreographed this very deliberately, we haven't choreographed it very strongly, because a discussion benefits from being a discussion, which is where I think the discussions earlier about inquisitorial adversarial is really interesting. And that's one of my main messages as a black letter lawyer who's interested in who speaks first and who asks what questions. I think whether this new digital world, if we have to live in it, I'm very, very nervous of it, but if we have to live with it, whether it should embolden us to do some quite dramatically different other things as well. But I don't want to talk too much, I've just been speaking for a minute to give our panelists time to think about what they really want to say. And I don't know whether you want to speak in the reverse order that we did before or the same order, or for me to choose a random alphabetical order, I'd rather that democratically, aha, you choose, who would like to speak first. Lorna wants to speak first, then you won't get another chance though. I'll just say because I'm in a field with people who've got a lot more research background than I have. And I just, so in that sense I just want to use this as an opportunity for a call to arms really for research. I can't see anything improving without research. So I'd like to ask you all what your recommendations are for future research or analysis or inquiry and how you think the pandemic has created an opportunity for that research which we wouldn't have had. I don't think so anybody, any takers. Emma, I know you're about to start some research, aren't you? Which with Linda Malkahi, so perhaps you'd like to tell us. I will select we're going to get Emma, Alex, Carolyn, and then you know you're all next. Thank you. So the work I'm undertaking with Linda Malkahi and Anna Salapatanas at the University of Oxford, we've got a grant to look at ways in which we can use audio visual tools to help enhance participation of lay people, particularly in the family courts and also in tribunals in terms of educating them about, you know, what happens in a virtual trial, how to kind of, you know, how to ensure they have effective participation by being able to have their say, you know, have their voice heard, to know what the protocols and procedures are, you know, to know what to happen if there's a glitch to use Carolyn's fantastic word, you know, how to kind of improve that experience for them so they have the confidence. And one thing that's really coming to the fore, actually, in terms of the things that we're discussing is, you know, the fact that actually most people who come to court are coming, you know, will we experience a sort of high levels of anxiety, you know, what can we do to kind of reduce and minimize people's anxieties about, you know, the unknown about what they're about to step into. So that's sort of really, it's a very practical project in that in that respect. But I think to the earlier points, I think, you know, so much of society is moving digital digitally. And, and we're sort of, you know, we're becoming more and more kind of familiar and comfortable with things like just, you know, never going into the bank anymore but doing online banking and things like that. And so while we want to kind of reap the benefits of technology and how it can help us, I think it is really important to kind of look at how things are being, you know, some of the things that were happening in that space, you know, whether it be incidental contact with people, I mean, all of us are sort of moving away from our offices and I know I've had loads of conversations with colleagues around, oh, we never have that chat, you know, that informal incidental chat. So for me, my interest is in the incidental, you know, what happens when we kind of transform the physical setting, you know, how do we capture those things that get lost but aren't necessarily valued, but they're very implicitly in the structure of things. So for me, I think going forward, that is sort of what I want, you know, it's like how do we capture what is it that we're losing along the way and how can we transform that into a new setting? How can we reimagine it within this virtual space? Thank you. So we're going to go, Alex, Carolyn, Vincent, Penny, and Penny, I'm going to also ask you to answer Bradley Reed's last question, but I'll read it to you if you don't have access to it. So again, Alex, Carolyn, Vincent, Penny. Yeah, just, I mean, the first thing is that I'm going to be following with real interest, the research that each of the panelists are outlining because it sounds fantastic. I mean, I think one of the projects that I'm picking up now is continuing to be interested in this question of why court location matters. And I'm starting a project looking at the location of the trials that the ICC is going to conduct into the Rohingya Muslim atrocities that allegedly have taken place in Myanmar, Burma. And, you know, the deliberation there is about where the trials should take place. And it's just interesting to me that this question of court location is important both in procedural terms, also obviously as we've discussed today in symbolic terms, and you know, and does come to bear on questions of access to justice. It's going to be interesting to see how the kinds of innovation that we're seeing and we discussed today in terms of virtual participation, start to reshape these questions around court location and proximity and war crimes trials. And, you know, substantively, how does this shape the fundamental question that lurks in the background of whether or not individuals and groups feel that justice is being done in these cases and what kinds of participation individuals have within these trial trials, trial processes where they're increasingly being participating virtually. So that's, that's my future research in kind of the area and I'm, yeah, fascinated to follow some of these questions around what what virtual participation means. Thank you, Carolyn. Thank you. As I mentioned before, in July, I'm starting this project, the digital criminal justice project vulnerability in the digital subject. Interestingly, my fieldwork is supposed to include Australia, New Zealand and England and Wales, but I'd be interesting to see if indeed I'm actually allowed to travel to your part of the planet, given the pandemic at the moment so I'm not quite sure if I'll get there or not. But basically, as I talked about before, especially during COVID-19, we can sort of see the the rise of digital justice as I talked about before. We can see this widespread transformation of justice occurring before us. And perhaps this is occurring before all of these issues have been resolved. That's sort of quite clear that we basically have, you know, through the urgency of the pandemic just to keep the wheels of justice turning over, that we have this pilot, a very large scale pilot. But I guess what what does that actually mean for vulnerable participants in the high stakes of criminal justice in particular. So I'm going to be looking at the impact of digital justice, the notion of looking at fair and inclusive justice for vulnerable users of criminal courts. I'm going to be aiming to, you know, understand the range of vulnerabilities that are being presented in the courtroom end point of audio visual links. I'm going to be instead of talking to prisoners though I'm going to be talking to judges and lawyers and getting their perspectives on how they deal or how they understand vulnerability how they deal with people who may be vulnerable. You know, how do we actually identify and triage people how do we know who actually needs some adjustment in this actual procedure. So I'm going to sort of be, I guess there's a couple of aims that I'm looking at I'm going to be developing and sort of refining concepts of digital justice, looking at digital vulnerability. And very much the theoretical framework that I'll be using is this notion of digital criminology which is sort of an emergent understanding of the fact that we are now living very much in a digital realm, you know, it's just part of our everyday existence. So I'm going to be hopefully applying these concepts to test existing practices to develop some alternate recommendations to try and promote inclusive justice, and to hopefully generate some strategies to better protect the vulnerable to the digital justice. So, yeah, that that's sort of going to be very much my focus coming first of July and with any luck I might get to see you in England, if I'm allowed to travel. Thank you, Vincent. So, first of all, you might hear some noise because my neighbor is renovating so I'm going to try to make it as clear as possible. The next, in the next years, I think one of the aspect that is very important is to study the impact of demeanor demeanor sorry on in virtual trials, compared to the impact of demeanor in in person trials, because as probably most of you know, the impact of demeanor can be quite large in trials. A lot of trials are decided upon credibility of witnesses, and one of the main factors of credibility assessment is the demeanor of witnesses. So in terms of issues, I also think there should be more research on the impact of facial stereotypes in virtual trials. Again, as probably some of you or most of you know, facial stereotypes impact the way that evidence can be assessed, and facial stereotypes can also impact the outcome of trials. So again, the the in person versus virtual trials of the impact of facial stereotypes should be studied further. And finally, also, as I mentioned earlier, is the empathy versus authority of trials and again the impact of the demeanor of not only the witnesses but the lawyers and the judge. I think it was Caroline that mentioned the the impact of virtual trials on cross examinations earlier today. Well, this this is this is extremely important because, again, when when it comes to demeanor, let's not forget that it's not only about the justice, but there's also the judge and the lawyers, and all of those interactants, they contribute to the communicational scene of the trial so that's that's the plan for the next years. Thank you. And I already pushed towards penny. The question from about Bradley read which says thinking about Vincent's point about the impact of nonverbal cues could appearance by video link from a prison be considered to endanger and addressing a jury is the panel surprise that appears to be no article two challenges so far. Is this an example of the problems of access to justice. I was so very interested by Joshua Yarm's question which anyone may want to refer to in a minute, what measures can be put in place to allow judges to effectively manage trials and act as the mediator and digital participation to all involved. This is undoubtedly a complex world that we're examining today, and I dump both those complex questions on you, Penny with your rounding up of where you stand today. I'll have a go at the first I don't know about the second I haven't even thought about that but Bradley's question about could defendants by video link be biasing. Yes. And then the other part of the question of we surprised by a lack of a legal challenge to these virtual joining in on hearings. And for my part I think no because it comes back to research. If you were challenging it on what basis really you're going to call an expert witness who's going to say, well, we just don't know really it could be biasing it could be biasing in favor of the accused it could be biasing anyway. So I'm not surprised that there isn't a legal challenge and then it underscores this point that that I made and a number of other people have made today, which is that we need the research and I think that I would stress the importance of multi disciplinary research and we want the architects or sociologists or psychologists as well as the lawyers coming together and looking at the architecture for example I love this point about empathy versus authority as Vincent described it or others have talked about power we think in South Africa, which I think really underscored the humility. So you've got the sort of power versus humility, or authority versus empathy point. How do you recreate that in the virtual environment. And I'm sure it must be important to do that to have the power but also have the humility. So I'm really interesting stuff coming out here for my part, future of research other people have mentioned what they're doing. We've just been awarded at ICPR with them the lead being Professor Jessica Jacobson who I work with a lot. The lead being on a project on the coroner's court will be looking at the participation of bereaved people in in quest so that's where I'm headed from about may onwards in terms of major research projects but thank you very much for letting me join and I'm going to stick myself on mute now and let somebody else have a go at that other question. Well I'm going to pass the floor now to Lorna. I don't know whether you want to answer that question or whether you simply wish to sum up the conference from your perspective at this point and I might get back to that question in a minute but over to you now Lorna. I just wanted to say thank you to everybody for coming along and helping me unravel some of these many many threads that I've been looking at for the last three or four years. I've been looking at the courts for a very long time because I started in law and ended up in architecture and and the experience stayed with me so as I see the courts change and in particular this this kind of paradigm shift that we're all living through at the moment where everything seems to be becoming virtually enormously rapid rate of pace. I just I just became increasingly concerned that that there weren't enough people looking at it in a cohesive manner. So we're all kind of looking at bits of it but we're not all talking to each other that much although obviously we all do read each other's research and what comes out in conversation is often revealing. It's in spaces between what we're all considering but I think that there's power to make a difference and to expand our knowledge. I used an article I wrote in Council last May to call for more research and to use this small window of opportunity created by the pandemic to produce a sound body of evidence on which to base informed decisions for the future of digital justice and courts reform. The window is not now as small as it was then and the backlog in the criminal courts is increasing and the crisis and justice system more critical. Despite the inception implementation of the strategy, which you put into mind and go courts report. The potential remains the backlog to simply outstrip the throughput of existing courts and the potential for misery and justice denied to so many victims and defendants waiting for their day in court is is fast. The next generation of courts is required speaking as an architect so I can tell you it will take a couple of years before we have them, but we need them sooner than we expected to. And the pandemic remains out of control there's no clear end to it in sight. And the justice system can no longer rely on a swift return to normality to resolve the backlog. So we need to see a functioning justice system, perhaps more than any time since World War Two because of the threat of the pandemic to public confidence in justice system. So, so this rider called earlier this week, or was it last week for research and for a collaborative review of justice to provide a reasonable response to the pressures of the pandemic on the system. And perhaps a new model will result but it's already clear that the design and future spaces of justice will need to incorporate both physical and virtual spaces. Almost everyone seems to agree that there's no going back to the old model and virtual justice in some form, having once been seen cannot now be unseen. So it's a question of how we do that. And from my part I'd like to see more collaboration between the likes of us to resolve that question we can't all do this by ourselves but we could all collectively make a difference I think. It's an opportunity to do so, so that we, we end up with a system that that works for everybody, and not just a few. And that's all I have to say on subject. Thank you. Joshua's question about what measures can be put in place to allow judges to effectively manage trials is rather nicely I think answered by. The chat, and we have a very interesting question. Response in the chat from. Hang on they're jumping around in my thing. Yes, Pierre, again you're in Quebec we surveyed litigants etc etc the most valued aspect of the process was respect. It's a really useful discussion today. But what's missing of course is the voice of the defendants and the witnesses. And I think it is really important to try and hear their voices Caroline I don't know whether you'll get to England and Wales and the next year who knows. But we have proved today that we can talk to each other without having to visit each other's jurisdictions, and I am certain that we will continue this conversation, this interdisciplinary conversation is really, really important. And of course is listening to the views and opinions of other users of the system, and it would be nice to know how we could bring that debate, or make that discussion more effective of bringing in court users more widely. So I think wind start winding up our decision our discussion in a moment. If anyone here any of the speakers want to have a last word you're very welcome to interrupt me at this moment. Please wave your hand or whatever I'm looking. There has been enormous material. The reading lists we've got an extraordinary presence here thank you so much. The reading lists that we will got in these interdisciplinary worlds. I like to keep an eye on what's going on in this world but you've given me a lot more to read today which is fantastic. The whole webinar will be available on our own YouTube channel, also on the cccj law cam app website. If anyone can't find it email me on nmp21 at cam.ac.uk, and I'll tell you where to find it. I'm sure it's a debate that will go on. I hope that the panelists will be interested to be invited back. The world's a very fast moving world isn't it when we look back at 12 months ago before the pandemic. It feels like a very, very different world, not only in our personal lives, our research lives, but in what a court looks like, what a good court is and how a court functions. So I'm sure there's a lot of space for us to meet again. Thank you very, very, very much to everyone, especially Caroline for whom it is well after midnight. Vincent who it is less early in the morning than it was when we started, but for those of you within this jurisdiction to thank you enormously and my main thanks go to Lorna, who this baby this seminar was thank you very much indeed Lorna for provoking us to do this debate. Thank you, everyone. Goodbye. Bye bye. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye bye.