By Gill Hunter, Amy Kirby,  Nicola Campbell and Zahra Wynne

In earlier blogs for this series, we have introduced our project – lived experience of the law, funded by the Nuffield Foundation – and outlined its aim to explore people’s experiences of the family and criminal courts in the context of their wider encounters with the law and justice system. We have presented findings from our pilot study and, in our last blog, the peer researchers who are working with us described their experiences of the project. The focus of this blog is on the methodological approach adopted by this study, specifically, how we are collecting stories about encounters with the law through the use of narrative interviewing. We wanted to examine how the frequently invoked concepts of ‘effective participation’ and ‘access to justice’ are understood from a lived experience perspective and to identify in these accounts both small-scale and more ambitious ways of improving participation and access to justice based on lived experience. We also wanted to consider how encounters with ‘the law’ over time might impact people’s perceptions of legitimacy, trust in and future expectations of the justice system. 

Potentially there is a lot of ground to cover, and we have two main aims for our research interviews. First, to hear in detail about people’s most recent contact (in the past three years) with the family or criminal court. This is our starting point and the key inclusion criteria for the project. We want to know about the legal, practical and emotional challenges of being involved in court proceedings as a defendant, witness or party, to explore what people understand about legal processes, their experience of legal representation, their interactions with the judiciary and how they view their own role in court proceedings. Second, we want to locate this recent experience of the court in the context of wider, lifetime contacts with legal authorities.

We timetabled two hours for each interview with a break in the middle, if needed by the interviewee. We were initially concerned that two hours was too much of a time commitment to ask of someone, but this has proved to be unfounded. Generally, people are happy to talk, and most interviews completed thus far have lasted well over an hour and sometimes over two! We promote the interview as a space for people to tell their story about their contact with the criminal and family courts, to talk in their own terms, and at their own pace, and to focus on the aspects that were most was significant to them. 

We designed a topic guide to provide a loose structure to the interview. This includes a starting point to the story – Tell us how you came to be involved in [most recent court proceedings]? This first question can take some time, as people describe their broken and sometimes violent relationships and often significant life challenges. The middle portion is intended to focus on the detail of court proceedings and the end of the interview invites discussion about the aftermath, plans for the future and an opportunity to reflect on their experiences and perceptions about the fairness and quality of the justice system. We also ask what advice they would give someone who was about to go through court proceedings, based on their personal knowledge.

While the interviewee maintains more control in the telling than in perhaps a more structured interview, we do use a lot of ‘narrative probing’ to clarify issues or to seek further detail about the areas of interest noted above. Disclosure of wider encounters with legal authorities often comes up in the story unprompted by us, including interactions with the police, prisons and social services but we always ask if this is the first time they have been to a court and what other contacts they have had with legal authorities, including in childhood. Where contact is frequent, establishing the order, timeline and detail of encounters over a lifetime can be challenging. However, the root of our approach is to let the interviewees talk about what is important and meaningful to them and their stories are often told in a non-linear way. 

Peer researchers, who are recruited and trained by our partner agency Revolving Doors, interview with us, with the permission of the interviewee. This means there are often two people listening and probing. We wondered if that could be intimidating for interviewees but again it has mainly been positive with the peer researcher recognising and empathising with aspects of the story that chime with their own experiences. 

We have recruited interviewees for the project in a variety of ways, including through charities working in the criminal and family justice arena, social media and snowballing via peer researchers and interviewees. Some interviewees are more practised than others in speaking about their legal encounters. Charities increasingly foreground lived experience and have lived experience staff and discussion groups so some of our interviewees have told their story before. For others, however, this is the first time they have spoken in such depth about their court and wider justice system encounters. The interview can involve talking about difficult and distressing issues, and it has been important to ensure that support and post interview de-briefing is available if someone gets upset. We also have a system to check that people are ready to talk. The interview has been described by some interviewees as cathartic. This is illustrated here by an extract from one of the women we interviewed recently: ‘I feel like I find it therapeutic to just vent and talk about it, because for so long I feel like I didn’t say anything and I didn’t want to’. 

To date we have conducted over eighty interviews and plan to conduct a further 40. In addition to this, our main task over the coming months is to analyse these rich, nuanced and diverse stories alongside carrying out policy workshops which bring together our research participants and peer researchers with those involved in working in policy and practice – such as the judiciary, legal professionals and voluntary sector services – to co-produce reform recommendations.  

For further information, please contact the guest blog series editor: Dr Amy Kirby

We are currently recruiting participants for 1-2 hour narrative interviews for our Lived Experience of the Law project. We would like to hear from individuals who have been a defendant in the criminal courts or a party to proceedings in the family court (public and/or private) from 2021 onwards. If you would like more information or to make a referral, please contact: lived-experience@bbk.ac.uk