Justice surveys can shed light onto a broad range of justice challenges, but they come in many shapes and forms: from population surveys, to court user surveys, to multi-stakeholder justice surveys. What determines the choice and what exactly is the purpose of each of them? Can you do them in several countries to generate cross-country data? Justice surveys complement other data sources. Administrative data in the courts enable development practitioners to tell a story about supply side aspects of the system, especially efficiency. However, they do not capture the experiences of users and other stakeholders of the judicial system such as judges, prosecutors and administrative staff. Administrative data will tell you even less about those claims and potential users who do not make it to the system due to access to justice challenges.
This session provided staff with technical guidance on how to decide on the specific survey, how to design it, how to implement it, and how to utilize the data in the reform process.
Participants learned why justice surveys are an important tool to diagnose justice challenges, especially those related to the quality of service delivery and access to services, received guidance on how to choose the type of justice survey that fits their purpose and how to design it, insights into what is needed to successfully implement the survey, and how to best engage with clients and other stakeholders to utilize the survey findings.