A while back I was doing some co-production training for Crest Advisory a criminal justice think tank. At the time it got me thinking about juries and co-production. Juries are one of the oldest examples of citizen participation they started around the 12th Century. Today’s modern court room juries would probably be unrecognisable to the 12 knights which Henry 2nd used to help solve land disputes. It’s sad to reflect that now the right be tried by one’s peers might be rationed or curtailed.
In the co-production world, we often like to point out when institutions don’t involve citizens fully in decision making about public services. In a jury trial 12 members of the public advised by a judge make what is surely one of the most critical decisions that can ever be made – whether someone is guilty or innocent of a serious crime. But we don’t usually see this as co-production or citizen participation. Maybe that’s because we take this ancient right for granted. Yet juries share quite a lot of characteristics with good practice in co-production. For example, members of a jury are paid for loss of earnings and can claim travel and refreshment costs. Jurists are involved from the start to the finish of a trial. Juries are advised and supported by the judge and other court officials. Juries even have their own ground rules in the form of the oath they take at the beginning of the trial.
Of course, the jury system is not perfect. But next time someone argues that a decision is too complex to be co-produced or members of the public aren’t qualified to get involved in a particular project. It might be worth reminding them that everyone except perhaps David Lammy seems to accept that the public should be meaningfully involved in that most serious of decision making processes, a criminal trial.
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