How stressful is it to be a judge or a magistrate? New research on the psycho-logical health of judges has just been published in the 'journal of psychiatry, psychology and law'. The study found that many judicial officers are deeply troubled by what they see as an excessive workload -- and its impact both on them and on the people who appear before them in court.
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00:00The researcher's lead author is Carly Schriever.
00:05She's a psychologist, a lawyer, and an empirical researcher.
00:10And for this study, she did 59 in-depth interviews with judges and magistrates around the country
00:16from five different jurisdictions.
00:18And what she found was that pretty much every one of them said workload was a massive issue
00:23for them.
00:25One magistrate described the workload as enormous and reported hearing between 60 and 70 cases
00:32a day, many of them family violence cases.
00:35And he said that this was absurd.
00:37You always want to feel that people who come to court have been heard and their cases have
00:41been dealt with fairly and justly, rather than being forced into a situation where you
00:47have to, quote, tick and flick.
00:49Now another magistrate described the work pressures as, quote, shoveling snow while
00:54it's still snowing.
00:56And another judge in a civil court said that he felt that he was on a treadmill.
01:01So that gives you a flavor of some of the comments in the study.
01:06One particularly interesting response was from a magistrate who pointed the finger at
01:10the law and order drive.
01:12And he said that as there was pressure to increase the number of police, that meant
01:17that there were more police doing police work, leading to more arrests and more people coming
01:22before the courts.
01:24Then that magistrate said, unlike police, there's no money and no votes in the courts.
01:31So there was extra workload on the courts from all this extra policing out in the community.
01:37One magistrate described a situation where she had 65 cases in a day just before Christmas
01:45and said, you just can't do it.
01:46You can't.
01:47Well, you can do it, but you do it so fast that there's contempt for the people's ability
01:52to comprehend what's happening to them.
01:55And she described that as being appalling.
01:58And are the concerns only about the volume of work, Damien?
02:02Well, no.
02:03One magistrate spoke about the inadequacy of the sentencing options and the inadequacy
02:08of funding for rehabilitation and corrections and said, quote, so you're seeing these people
02:15come in, go out, set your time watch, and they come back again.
02:20And really just highlighting the fact that jail's not the answer, but they're really
02:26aren't the tools for keeping people out of jail and rehabilitating them.