We are delighted to announce £2.5m in funding to the Institute for Fiscal Studies to analyse impacts of changes to the justice system and the demands on it in England and Wales.
Transforming justice: The interplay of social change and policy reforms will address knowledge gaps around the consequences of both significant reductions in funding and a sequence of major procedural reforms to modernise the justice system over the last fifteen years.
A well-functioning justice system is fundamental to social well-being, supporting an inclusive and secure society, and underpinning wider trust in the state. However, despite the scale of change, and the central importance of justice to everyday social and economic life, to-date there has been relatively limited systematic economic and quantitative analyses of the impact of this.
This project will help us understand much more about the effects on people’s access to justice and pathways through the justice system, as well as the wider effects on life chances for those encountering the justice system. It will also look at the relationship with other areas of social policy and how changes there can impact over time on some types of demand on the justice system.
A programme of multi-stranded research projects will draw primarily upon the administrative datasets curated through the Ministry of Justice’s ‘Data First’ programme, funded by ADR UK. The analysis will cover many of the system’s jurisdictions (administrative, civil, family, and criminal) building the evidence base on what makes the justice system work and whether it effectively serves its purpose, and in doing so helping inform both evidence-based policy and public debate about justice.
Lead researchers for the project include Professor Imran Rasul at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), Professor Joe Tomlinson at the University of York, and Abi Adams-Prassl at the University of Oxford. Other researchers include academics from University of Rome Tor Vergata, University of Bristol, and University College London. The project will run for four years in partnership with the Public Law Project.
This research agenda brings quantitative economic analysis to bear on these issues, to provide greater understanding of what these changes have meant in terms of whether access to justice and pathways through the justice system, remain open and fair to all. Using newly available data from across parts of the justice system, we will seek to understand how reforms within the justice system and changes in other areas of social policy have impacted experiences of the justice system, economic relationships and prosperity.Professor Imran Rasul
Rob Street, Director, Justice at the Nuffield Foundation said: “The justice system is facing huge challenges and understanding what effect this is having on people’s ability to access justice is of paramount importance. We are very pleased to be funding this important project and its excellent interdisciplinary team. They will play a vital and timely role in examining this critical societal issue and contribute high-quality evidence to inform debates about justice policy and priorities in the coming years.”
