As a teenager in 2018, Dhillon Shenoy was among the crowd of fans and press at Wimbledon magistrates court when TV star Ant McPartlin was sentenced for drink-driving. He recalls the scrum of photographers outside the southwest London courthouse, while inside journalists and members of the public jostled for courtroom seats in a case which captured the national spotlight.
Now Dhillon is back at the same magistrates court in 2023 on a much more sedate day, volunteering for the Court Watch programme and aiming to examine the opposite side of the justice coin: the cases unlikely to appear as newspaper headlines but which are no less important to the people caught up in them.
He is passionate about society becoming more aware of what it means for justice to be done, and recognises the yawning gap between the work of the courts and the public at large.
“It should be more welcoming”, he said. “There should be more active encouragement for people to go along and watch courts – more of a sense of it being a public responsibility.
“Courts are places where potentially life-changing decisions get made on an everyday basis. That’s something that people should be more inclined to take more of an interest in and pay attention.”
Court Watch has recruited an army of 150 volunteers to give up their time to observe the work of magistrates courts around the capital, highlighting flaws in the justice system and reporting back on the quality of justice they see.
Charity Transform justice is behind the project, which is funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust and the Network for Social Change. Volunteers are recording profiles of the judges, magistrates, and defendants, observing the way hearings are conducted, and noting down the outcomes of each case as well as factors including disabilities, domestic violence, mental health struggles, and unemployment.
Transform Justice director Penelope Gibbs said the Court Watch programme aims to collect quality data on diversity and inclusion, to properly investigate rumoured bad practices, and ultimately fill a gap in the public knowledge of justice. “Everybody knows that the magistrates courts are underreported and under-observed”, she said, and pointed to the success of court-watching schemes in the USA as inspiration.
Court Watch volunteers like Dhillon have undergone training on how to monitor hearings, and the obstacles they may face along the way.
Every person who enters Wimbledon magistrates court is subjected to security checks which are notoriously the toughest - and most intrusive - in the capital.
In an entrance hall oppressively plastered with posters of rules, regulations, warnings, and out-of-date Covid safety measures, the security guard demands that all bags are emptied down to the last pen. She rifles through every page of every book, and pulls out a torch to investigate the insides of wallets, glasses cases, and lunchboxes.
It’s a confronting and uncompromising experience to start a court visit, feeling more rigorous than getting through airport security.
“It’s not really helpful at all...they don’t provide much of an incentive for people to attend court”
Once inside, Dhillon scans the case lists posted on the wall to determine which courtroom to sit in. Some cases show just the defendant’s name, others contain more details such as the charges they face.
“It’s not really helpful at all”, he says of the sparse details, observing that lists published online and in the court “don’t provide much of an incentive for people to attend court”.
This is Dhillon’s fourth Court Watch day, after a previous trip to Wimbledon and two visits to Highbury Corner in north London, and he has begun to understand the “chaos and confusion” magistrates courts are currently enduring with the switch to a new digital case management system.
But he is keenly aware that the general public could be bamboozled by the maelstrom of court process or put off entirely by the paucity of information in the public domain.
Staff at Wimbledon welcome Dhillon as he tours the courts looking for a sitting case. A list caller – the person who manages the day’s cases – runs through his agenda for the day, and helpfully points him towards another courtroom that may be a little busier.
Another bemoans the fact the prison van containing defendants is “travelling around London” and isn’t expected to arrive before lunchtime. She lets out a knowing eye-roll at the inefficiency and waste, as courts frequently sit in stasis waiting for delayed and missing prison vans.
Commonplace too in London’s courts are the visible signs of decay from decades of underinvestment. Dhillon points out the threadbare and stained carpets, while next to us in the public gallery four seats have been cordoned off as a broken air conditioning unit drips forlornly into a suitably-placed bucket.
Harrow crown court in northwest London is currently closed entirely for nine months over crumbling concrete fears, and a room at Inner London crown court had to be shuttered due to a ceiling collapse. Around the capital’s courts, staff, lawyers, and even judges wearily swap stories of broken lifts, leaking sewage, and clapped-out equipment.
Dhillon, representing the fresh eyes of the public, admits the state of the buildings sometimes makes him “uncomfortable”, adding: “How well the courts are maintained has an impact on how welcoming it is as an environment”.
Dhillon is a final year English and history student at Durham University, and has one eye on a career in the law after graduation. He has already seen the High Court in action, the inner workings of the immigration tribunals, attended crown court trials, and in the summer he signed up to the Court Watch programme to broaden his experience further.
We take a seat in court for the sentencing of a 47-year-old man from Merton who was caught driving while on drugs. His life spiralled downwards when a five-year relationship ended and he wound up homeless, depressed, and sleeping in his van. There are just five seats in court for the public, and the defendant is not visible from three of them. Dhillon observes that the courtroom next door has just two chairs for the public. “It’s not great”, he says. “In some courts you can’t see anything at all.”
“I’m having difficulty hearing everything that’s being said”
Videolinks were embraced by the courts during Covid and are now a ubiquitous part of the justice system. But Court Watch volunteers are seeing they are not without their challenges. Midway through the hearing, a probation officer in court carried out an on-the-spot assessment of the defendant’s ability to perform community service, and told the magistrates of his conclusions.
In doing so, he inadvertently highlighted one of the perils of lawyers appearing in court via videolink. “I’m having difficulty hearing everything that’s being said”, admitted the defendant’s solicitor, before he attempted to finish his submissions while relying on the words of the probation officer he has not properly heard.
In another court, a woman is due to go on trial for causing a car crash before driving away. But the hearing is in peril due to a blunder familiar to those who spend their days in the criminal courts. “I don’t believe an interpreter has been booked”, admits the prosecutor, asking for time to speak to his witnesses.
“We’ll struggle on and do the best we can”, he concludes. The victim in the case is a young mother who was collecting her child from after-school classes when the car crash happened. At court, she’s on a parking meter and has her handbag slung over her denim jacket as she gives her evidence, looking ready to bolt for the door if needed.
The second witness needed the interpreter, and her stint in the witness box is punctuated by lengthy struggles to understand the questions. The defendant, a 24-year-old pregnant woman, is allowed to sit behind her lawyer in the brick-lined courtroom for her trial, rather than behind the Perspex glass of the dock. She is found guilty and ordered to pay a £300 fine.
Dhillon has seen defendants with disabilities and mental health struggles having to represent themselves in court, with some openly admitting that they don’t understand the court process.
He has experienced first-hand the difficulties in hearing while sat in public galleries encased in thick Perspex. And he has repeatedly faced questions about his very presence in the courts. From a lawyer asking “What are you doing here?” with a quizzically raised eyebrow to a magistrate appearing somewhat amazed that anyone was in the public gallery at all, the question just kept being asked.
“I should have the ability to walk in, go through security, and sit in the back of any courtroom that I choose that’s having a public hearing”, says Dhillon, after the fifth time he was asked to identify himself. Penelope is more strident: “If you believe in open justice, they shouldn’t be asking at all.”
Dhillon finished the morning in the court dealing with transport offences, where a 37-year-old single mother of a severely disabled son was being prosecuted by Transport for London for accidentally using his Freedom Pass instead of her own Oyster card.
Magistrates accepted an honest mistake had been made and ordered the woman to pay a £1.75 fine to cover the unpaid bus fare, while refusing to add TfL’s £150 costs to the punishment.
The defendant broke down in tears at the decision, thanking the magistrates profusely for their mercy. It was open and fair justice in action, and heartening to see.
But moments later we were unceremoniously ejected from the courtroom - the magistrates were going to sit in private to convict and sentence some more defendants based on written evidence in a process called the Single Justice Procedure. Open justice, this was not.
The Court Watch programme is initially running until December, with hopes of launching a more permanent, nationwide scheme in the future.
Penelope hopes it will drive “positive change” in the courts, and shine a light on a justice system that is often shrouded in darkness.
“The courts are technically open, but not as immediately understandable to the public as they should be”, she said.
The famous courts mantra is “Justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done”. That’s difficult to achieve when the public galleries are empty. With the Court Watch project, there is more of a chance of that mantra becoming a reality.
