Civic duty

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been doing a civic duty as a juror at the local Crown Court.

Before starting last week, I’d become a bit concerned that I would be spending quite a bit of time looking at how society goes wrong. I studied enough Criminology at university to know that poverty, drug and alcohol dependency, illness, mental health challenges and social care issues are significant factors in a large proportion of crime. The idea of spending my days examining the grim outcomes of those problems felt like a real challenge in a period when so much negative news dominates the public agenda.

And sure enough, the case that we were assigned to met just about all of those criteria in a complex and ultimately very tragic case of sexual abuse. 

But seven days later, as much of a surprise to myself as anything, I feel heartened and lifted. Perhaps the bad news, which sells advertising space and engagement, has been distracting me from the underlying truth: that the vast majority of people are good, honest, and trusting folk.

How have I got to that? Because of the way in which the jury system works.

There aren’t many times in life when we find ourselves surrounded by people who are there because of a literal lottery. The Central Summoning Bureau is a part of His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS), and (presumably through a computerised system) selects people from the Electoral Register between the ages of 18 and 75 to attend Jury Service at one of over 70 Crown Courts in the UK. At the court, 18 potential jurors are then sent to a courtroom, having been picked at random. Anyone who knows any of the key actors in the trial ahead is dismissed, and then the 12 jurors are picked, again at random, from those who remain of the 18. 

And the eleven other people with whom I spent the last seven days showed trust, respect, empathy, patience, and care for one another. We took the task very seriously. We spent time in respectful debate. We knew that we were all participating in a process that would, one way or another, have life-changing consequences for the people affected.

In short, it worked because 12 people randomly selected and brought together were able to work together.

And having had the experience about a decade ago, it worked then, too. And that we have the jury system in operation demonstrates that it works consistently.

This doesn’t fit the prevailing narrative in much of public life at the moment—the agenda of people who focus on division and differences. Most of us aren’t like that. Most of us, I suspect, can’t quite believe that there are people in positions of power and influence who seem to be so uncollaborative and divisive. Maybe those people get into those positions because the vast majority of us simply are incredulous that anyone could actually be like that?

The last seven days have been a privilege. A privilege to take part in a key part of our democratic and legal system. And a privilege to spend time doing something important with 11 other people, there only because we are fellow citizens, and we won a strange series of lotteries.