Forcing a Square Peg into a Round Hole? Reflections upon the Importation of the Concept of Community Justice into an English Magistrates' Court

Following the innovative lead of the first community courts in the USA, attempts have been made over the last decade to embed this aspect of community justice in other jurisdictions, including those in the UK. This paper examines the efforts made by practitioners to graft community or problem-solving justice on to the existing infrastructure of a local magistrates’ court in England. It draws upon data obtained by ethnographic fieldwork methods, particularly observations and interviews with participants, conducted as a part of a larger ESRC-funded research project. The paper seeks to identify and make sense of the challenges encountered by those seeking to make a reality of community justice in a context in which one new modality of doing justice is effectively superimposed upon the negotiated order of the existing modality of summary justice. In particular, the paper questions whether the result is one of resistance, accommodation, or hybridisation; and it reflects upon the consequences of this for normative principles of justice and due process.