A well-functioning justice system underpins an inclusive society and trust in the state. It serves as cornerstone of the welfare state, ensuring rights underpinning economic security. The justice system in England and Wales has been transformed over the last decade through large-scale reductions funding and a sequence of major procedural reforms. Despite the scale of change, there has been limited economic and quantitative analysis of impacts on access to justice, pathways through the justice system and wider effects on well-being for those experiencing the justice system. This reflects the underdeveloped state of economic, quantitative, and evidence-based approaches to studying the justice system.
This programme will go a long way to filling that gap, representing and leading, a step change in how the justice system is understood. It will do so through an integrated set of research projects that will advance, using quantitative and economic analysis of new administrative datasets, our understanding of the consequences of changing demands for justice, access to justice, the effectiveness of the justice system, and impacts on the well-being and wider life chances of those experiencing the justice system. It will analyse how significant reforms to the procedures and funding
of the justice system have impacted actors within it, such as the police, prosecutors, legal representatives and courts. It will also investigate how the demands of individuals and families on the justice system have changed due to pressures originating from outside the system itself.
Our aim is to develop a depth and breadth of expertise on justice within IFS, and with partner institutions, such that there is a group of independent experts who can support, challenge and communicate about developments in justice policy and spending in the public domain.
The programme will build a cadre of researchers from across disciplines to tackle issues related to the justice system. It will do so by training legal researchers interested in employing economic and quantitative methods, and educate non-lawyers about the opportunities for empirical legal research. The programme will also advocate for further development of the data infrastructure related to the justice system itself. Ultimately, the programme will seek to drive cultural change, ensuring that economic and quantitative methods are better represented within the study of the justice system.
Funded by the Nuffield Foundation
