En route with a steering wheel

There were probably forty people in that room when one man raised his hand. One man who had mistakenly wandered into a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Roger Strathausen on ‘Embedding Equity in Legal Institutions with Legal Tech’ during the Liquid Legal Institute Conference in Germany. Thinking that he was there to learn about embedding financial equity into his legal practice, this man had stumbled into was a panel discussion about embedding social equity into legal institutions. “What you’re saying,” the man started, “is that we need to be more compassionate to victims of sexual violence.” “Not quite” replied Sofie-Amalie Torp Dideriksen, “it is not compassion that is needed. It is agency.”

Aaron Leakey, a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria (Canada) who investigates the way participatory legal design methodologies can be adapted so as to improve the experiences of victims of violence in legal institutions, vividly remembers this exchange. It was the raw and honest dialogue between a legal practitioner and Dideriksen that stuck with him. Dideriksen, is also a PhD candidate – at the AI Futures Lab at the Human-Centred Design Department, Industrial Design Faculty, TU Delft University – whose academic focus is on using technology, like Artificial Intelligence, to support victims in the criminal justice system. Both Leakey and Dideriksen had just met at that Liquid Legal Institute Conference after agreeing, virtually, to partner on the topic with their co-panelist, Joaquin Santuber, who contributed to the conversation on the way that law is experienced in everyday life. While Leakey and Dideriksen live on different continents, they both believe that design methodology has the potential to better embed equity into the law and judicial systems. Both see the value in engaging the victims of sexual assault and the legal community in discussions about process improvement. And, while they have a lot of commonalities, they would not have met had it not been for Dideriksen’s decision to write and publish an academic article in the Legal Design Journal (“LD Journal”).

The LD Journal is the first academic journal of its kind. It connects academics and practitioners of legal design by combining three separate elements: articles, a studio showcase, and legal design news. Articles include scholarly works submitted to the Journal, which undergo a double-blind peer review and can include submissions in multiple languages to reflect the global nature of the practice. This is where Dideriksen and her co-authors, Dave Murray-Rust, Froukje Sleeswijk Visser and Pieter Jan Stappers, chose to publish their academic article, En route without a steering wheel – a victim-centred mapping of power in the criminal justice system”.

The En route article is an exploratory study that took place over an 8-month period of which nearly 2-months of analysis was needed to form the conclusions in the article. Dideriksen pondered whether technology could assist victims of sexual violence. The authors of the En route article combined design research theory and feminist literature and looked at how power was organized in the Dutch criminal justice system (‘CJS’).

The authors sought to tackle: a victim’s journey in the CJS; the victim’s power in the CJS; the victim’s experience power in the CJS. CJS is a complex and intricate system involving many actors and stakeholders such as police, prosecutors, the court (and judge) and ultimately prisons and probation services, each with a different responsibilities to report, investigate, prosecute and sentence a criminal matter. Mapping out the processes using the design methodology (aka legal design) seemed to be a logical approach. Using powerful design methodology tools like user-interviews and journey mapping, each of the victim’s steps was mapped out from intake to trial.

It is no secret that victims of sexual abuse have negative experiences in the criminal justice system: From prioritizing the rights of the accused over the victim, to a lack of control over case progression and lack of communication. However, design methodology helped the authors see a larger pattern. Once interviews were conducted and the victim’s journey was mapped out in the CJS, Dideriksen analyzed the journey using feminist theory, exploring specifically what power the victim had. That was when she had an “ah-ha” moment – she realized how little agency victims had in the CJS and those patterns of power dynamics became very obvious. Choice, they found, really only exists at the very starting line of their journey in a justice system, when the victim can decide to proceed with the case or not. Control is lost during the CJS process, quickly and in a sustained way, once the victim makes the decision to report a sexual assault. There were only few moments where the victim has a say at all. There are, for example, some later moments of agency throughout the victim’s journey, such as the ‘victim impact statement’. And this agency does matter. It is a way forward giving victims more power in the CJS.

As a non-legal professional, Dideriksen admits that when it comes to the CJS, she has a lot to learn, but she is enthusiastic about the experience. The research and analysis in support of the En route article enhances her belief that even small changes can have a massive impact on the CJS and improve a victim’s power.

Leakey also believes that the use of service design can help us understand and improve the criminal justice system itself. He emphasizes that, “the victim’s representation of justice is not generally represented in judicial conventions”. While working on his PhD thesis, he engaged in a casual discussion with Professor Michael Doherty, the LD Journal’s Editor-in-Chief and Professor of Law at Lancaster University, who steered Leakey towards Dideriksen’s article. The two connected virtually, at first, and shared their common thoughts on power at each stage in the CJS, despite operating in different continents.

Like all good academics, Leakey has comments on Dideriksen’s En route article questioning some of its guiding research and methodology. For example, while Dideriksen (and her co-authors) chose not to include victims in their interview research (e.g. because victims can be re-victimized when interviewed about their experience), Leakey points to empirical evidence that participating victims could find the process beneficial, and wonders why legal design rarely includes victims directly in design activities. Leakey also believes that often recommended improvements to the CJS simply get ignored and never implemented, which may have something to do with the general absence of victim involvement in the design of legal systems. In his own research, Leakey is considering developing a methodology that allows researchers to consciously think about how to develop a safe space for victims to be actively involved in the design of justice systems. Leakey sees a problem with continual design from the vantage point of power and privilege, and the need for legal systems to reflect the viewpoints of individuals impacted by violence so as to better respond to their needs. Dideriksen’s article, according to Leakey, is a great starting point for this analysis.

Conclusion

Dideriksen’s En route article has already had a lasting and substantial impact on Leakey’s research and writing, but so has Dideriksen. As Leakey watched the interaction between Dideriksen and the lawyer at the Legal Tech Talk panel, he realized that while the CJS still has a long way to go, it all starts with healthy debate, engagement and dialogue. We started this blog with one lawyer who was willing to raise his hand in a room full of legal professionals who he thought were learning about investment equity, not social justice. And, that social justice dialogue started with the LD Journal.