Courts and Tribunals Observers’ Network

Last year, Transform Justice published its report of courtwatchers’ experiences of observing magistrates’ court hearings in London.

Despite the courts being open in principle, the volunteers from CourtWatch London reported multiple barriers. You can read the full report here: “Why are you here?” Open justice in London magistrates’ courts.

The report emphasises that a big problem encountered by courtwatchers was an inability to actually hear the cases. They reported that hearings were consistently audible only 23% of the time. As the report states:

“The design of the courtroom is not in the gift of court staff, but turning on and properly using microphones, speaking louder and asking for people in the courtroom to keep extraneous noise down is. Audibility in the courtroom (or rather the lack of it) demonstrates the hierarchy of power, and the semi-invisibility of those at the back of the court. As explored in our other report, it’s likely that the difficulties courtwatchers had hearing what was being said were experienced by many defendants too.”

Transform Justice has written about this issue before. In August 2023, the organisation commented that: “Inaudible hearings not only undermine the principle of open justice for observers, but can also impede the participation of those directly involved.” You can read the full analysis here: Seen but not heard: is justice open if you can’t hear it?

This problem is not just confined to London magistrates’ courts and in a future blog post we will look at reports from different jurisdictions about audibility issues.