Access to Justice Assessment Toolkit

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Toolkits are evolving and changes may be made in future versions. For the latest version of the Toolkits refer to the website -

Note: While every effort has been made to produce informative and educative tools, the applicability of these may vary depending on country and regional circumstances.

Published in September 2014. © New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Prepared by Matthew Zurstrassen for the Federal Court of Australia.

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PJDP Toolkits

Introduction

For over a decade, the Pacific Judicial Development Programme (PJDP) has supported a range of judicial and court development activities in partner courts across the Pacific. These activities have focused on regional judicial leadership meetings and networks, capacity-building and training, and pilot projects to address the local needs of courts in Pacific Island Countries (PICs).

Toolkits

Since mid-2013, PJDP has launched a collection of toolkits for the ongoing development of courts in the region. These toolkits aim to support partner courts to implement their development activities at the local level by providing information and practical guidance on what to do. These toolkits include:

• Judges’ Orientation Toolkit
• Annual Court Reporting Toolkit
• Toolkit for Review of Guidance on Judicial Conduct
• National Judicial Development Committee Toolkit
• Family Violence and Youth Justice Project Workshop Toolkit
• Time Goals Toolkit
• Access to Justice Assessment Toolkit
• Trainer’s Toolkit: Designing, Delivering and Evaluating Training Programs

These toolkits are designed to support change by promoting the local use, management, ownership and sustainability of judicial development in PICs across the region. By developing and making available these resources, PJDP aims to build local capacity to enable partner courts to address local needs and reduce reliance on external donor and adviser support.

Use and support

These toolkits are available on-line for the use of partner courts at We hope that partner courts will use these toolkits as/when required. Should you need any additional assistance, please contact us at:

Your feedback

We also invite partner courts to provide feedback and suggestions for continual improvement.

Dr. Livingston Armytage

Team Leader,

Pacific Judicial Development Programme

September 2014

Table of Contents

Abbreviations...... iii

1Introduction

1.1What is an Access to Justice Assessment?

1.2Why conduct an Access to Justice Assessment?

1.3Who should be involved in implementing Access to Justice Assessments?

1.4The Contents of this Toolkit

2What Substantive Areas Should Access to Justice Assessments Cover?

2.1The Substantive Areas

2.2Deciding on which areas to focus on

3Stakeholder Focus Group Discussions

3.1What are Stakeholder Focus Group Discussions?

3.2Objective of Stakeholder Focus Group Discussions

3.3How to Identify Issues for Discussion?

3.4Identifying Appropriate Stakeholders

3.5Who to Involve – Court Staff

3.6Preparing the Discussions and Drafting A Questionnaire

3.7Conducting the Focus Group Discussion

3.8Documenting Findings

4Access to Justice Surveys

4.1What is an Access to Justice survey?

4.2Approaches to conducting Access to Justice surveys

4.3Planning and Implementing an Access to Justice Survey – Issues for Consideration

5Using the Findings from an Access to Justice Assessment

5.1Ways to use Findings

5.2Using Results from Focus Group Discussions

5.3Using Survey Results

Additional Documentation -

Annex 1: Methodological Tools Available...... A-1

Annex 2: Stakeholder Focus Group Discussion Guide, Tuvalu...... A-3

Annex 3: Example Questionnaires...... A-10

Annex 4: Additional Reading...... A-15

Abbreviations

1Introduction

1.1What is an Access to Justice Assessment?

An Access to Justice Assessment is a tool that can assist courts in planning their work, allocating resources and responding to community concerns. It can assist the court to improve service delivery by identifying justice needs within a particular country. Access to Justice Assessments provides people with an opportunity to give feedback on their justice needs and how justice sector agencies are addressing those needs. They also provide courts, including island courts, and other justice sector agencies with an opportunity to collect this feedback and plan taking the views of users and potential users into consideration.

The key aspect of Access to Justice Assessments is not that they are conducted but how the findings are used. A court needs to be committed to implementing the assessment and using the findings for these assessments to add value.

There are numerous approaches to conducting Access to Justice Assessments. Which approach to take will vary from country to country. It is recommended that a simplified approach is initially adopted in the Pacific. This involves conducting a series of Stakeholder Focus Group Discussions. This can be scaled up depending on the results.

1. Stakeholder Focus Group Discussions

A first step is to undertake routine Stakeholder Focus Group Discussions to receive feedback on court service delivery and broader justice needs. The toolkit provides detailed information for conducting these discussions with different key interest groups.

1. Access to Justice Surveys

Some courts may wish to go further to conduct Access to Justice surveys to provide more detailed and authoritative information. The toolkit provides some initial guidance on how to conduct Access to Justice surveys.

1.2Why conduct an Access to Justice Assessment?

“(Access to Justice) tools can help to determine whether access to justiceproblems are serious enough to warrant action. If the tools are sufficientlyprecise, these can also provide feed-back on the type of action that is likely to besuccessful.”[1]

The Access to Justice Assessment toolkit will enable courts to identify, on a routine basis, justice needs and issues of concern for the citizens. This information is important for courts in planning processes, improving service delivery and making decisions on prioritisation of resources. Assessments also allow courts to identify the needs of particularly marginalized or vulnerable members of the community. Targeting these groups should be a key component of any access to justice assessment. Finally, listening to people’s views can increase confidence in a justice system. It tells community members that institutions are responsive and making an effort.

Implementing the toolkit will assist courts:

1. Strengthen current Court services:

The toolkit enables courts to ask stakeholders a range of questions on court service delivery. Of particular relevance for courts in the Pacific, it enables courts to collect information on service delivery of lower level courts, such as island courts.

1. Identify needs that should be addressed but are currently not addressed:

Across the Pacific, as in many other jurisdictions, there are numerous justice needs that never reach the courts. Access to justice assessments provide courts with a means of identifying what those justice needs are, which are of most concern and which may require additional services or changes in current practices from the courts.

1. Document Progress:

If conducted on a routine basis, the information that is collected can document progress on specific issues. This information is particularly useful for annual reporting purposes and for making representations to Government or donors for additional resources.

1. Encourage other justice sector agencies to address needs:

By undertaking Access to Justice assessments and acting on the findings, courts can, over the longer-term, encourage other justice sector agencies to adopt a similar approach to service delivery.

1.3Who should be involved in implementing Access to Justice Assessments?

As the Pacific Judicial Development Programme (PJDP) is focused on the needs of judiciaries, the primary users of this toolkit are judges and court staff of judiciaries across the Pacific.

1. Chief Justices and senior members of the judiciary need to have active ownership of the Assessment process. This will ensure that findings are implemented.
2. Court registrars and staff need to be involved in the design and implementation of the toolkit.
3. Judges from lower-level courts, including lay judges, should be made familiar with the objectives of the assessment. They should understand that the assessment aims to strengthen service delivery rather than evaluate performance.

A secondary audience exists for the results of Access to Justice Assessments.

• Government & Policy Makers: Findings can often be useful in influencing policy makers, such as officials with responsibility for justice sector budgets.
• Other Justice Sector Agencies, such asthe police, prosecutors and lawyers associations, will be interested in the results of access to justice assessments. The toolkit itself may also be of relevance for these actors.
• Civil Society Organisations will be interested in the results. In a number of countries, civil society organisations also play an active role in implementing access to justice assessments.
• Donors have an interest in the results of Access to Justice Assessments. Assessments can be important tools in identifying and negotiating priorities with donors or advocating for additional resources.

1.4The Contents of this Toolkit

The toolkit is structured as follows:

Section 2 of this toolkit outlines options for the substantive issues these assessments can possibly cover. These substantive areas will differ from country to country depending on the needs of each country.

Section 3 describes the steps involved in planning, implementing and analysing the results of Stakeholder Focus Group Discussions. This covers:

• Objective of Stakeholder Focus Group Discussions
• What are Stakeholder Focus Group Discussions
• Identifying issues for discussion
• Identifying appropriate stakeholders
• Who to Involve - Court Staff and Resources Required
• Preparing the Discussion and Drafting a questionnaire
• Conducting Focus Group Discussions
• Documenting and Using Findings

Section 4 provides some information on developing Access to Justice Surveys. The section covers:

• What is an Access to Justice survey?
• Approaches to Conducting an Access to Justice Survey
• Planning and Implementing an Access to Justice Survey
• Using the Findings of an Access to Justice Survey

Section 5 provides guidance on how to ensure findings from Access to Justice Assessments are implemented.

2What Substantive Areas Should Access to Justice Assessments Cover?

2.1The Substantive Areas

The specific areas that access to justice assessments cover will vary from country to country depending on the local context. Assessments can be designed to cover just about any justice or court-related issue. This section lays out the potential range of issues that assessments generally are used for and provides a brief description of how each issue can benefit the work of courts.

• Age of respondents;
• Ethnicity, origin of respondents;
• Level of education;
• Gender, marriage status, family size;
• Economic & employment status including housing.

• Familiarity with particular laws;
• Familiarity with specific rights;
• Knowledge of functions of justice institutions;
• Sources of information on legal issues;
• Type of information that is most useful;
• Method of receiving information that is most effective.

• Awareness of and access to legal aid;
• Costs/barriers in accessing legal services;
• Quality of services provided by courts, police, prosecutors…
• Access to court fee waivers and other court services;
• Access to circuit courts.

• Proportion of people who experience cases;
• Most common types of cases;
• impact of cases on lives of respondents;
• institutions responsible for resolving cases (formal or local);
• what factors affect how people resolve cases;
• types of cases that need special attention or oversight;
• People’s perceptions on effectiveness of different systems;
• How customary systems or local courts are functioning.

• Perceptions of justice sector and local actors;
• Preferred actors in resolving disputes;
• Awareness of and confidence in local level courts;
• Likelihood of being asked for bribes or additional payments.

• Status of land people live on (own, rent, right of abode, no right);
• Types of disputes relating to land use;
• Differences in dispute resolution processes depending on land ownership or socio-economic status of parties;
• Differences between urban and rural areas;
• Functioning of land tribunals or local mechanisms.

• Confidence in safety and responsiveness of law enforcement;
• Approaches to dealing with criminal activity;
• Type of criminal activity of most concern to respondents;
• Perceptions of court handling of criminal activity;
• Effectiveness of different sentencing mechanisms and role of different actors in addressing crime;
• Perceptions on potential role of alternative/community sentencing.

• Levels of adoption (traditional and formal) in a community;
• Approaches to registering adoption;
• Approaches to resolving marital disputes;
• Types of child support payment and enforcement;
• Formalization of legal documentation (birth, marriage certificates) and consequences.

• Whether there are differences in resolving disputes or accessing services based on gender;
• Whether there are difference in justice needs based on gender;
• types of disputes experienced by women;
• Prevalence of violence against women and effectiveness of reporting mechanisms;
• Access to services for family law matters.

• Whether particular groups experience specific challenges in accessing or using courts;
• Differences in preference for using system based on characteristics of particular groups;
• Types of legal services that vulnerable groups may need.

• Types of legal documentation most in need by population;

• Role of courts or other justice sector agencies in providing legal documentation and quality of service;
• Impact of not having legal documentation;
• Quality of information about legal documentation.

• Perceptions of trust in government and local officials;
• Actual experiences in being asked to pay bribes or additional fees.

• Types of grievances that are not acted on;
• Reasons for not acting on grievances;
• Consequence of failing to act on grievances;
• Cases resolved by traditional/local actors and satisfaction level with resolution.

2.2Deciding on which areas to focus on

One of the biggest challenges in designing assessments involves deciding on how many issues to focus on and the level of detail for each issue. These decisions are a balancing exercise.