John Grisham's 1996 novel, The Runaway Jury was also made into a film. 2. Historian George Macaulay Trevelyan, put the origins of the jury in Britain down to ...
Second Edition Tom Wakeford
TEACH YOURSELF CITIZENS JURIES A Handbook by Tom Wakeford and the DIY Jury Steering Group Cartoons by Kate Charlesworth Accompanying Film by Swingbridge Media
Further information at: Films and other resources are available at www.citizensjury.org citizensjury.ageofwe.org 1
CONTENTS Background
What is a citizens jury? Why do a jury? The main ingredients
Do-it-yourself approaches to citizens juries
Choosing a subject Running a jury Launching the jury’s report Using the report
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INTRODUCTION
My journey with Do-It-Yourself Citizens Juries I came to citizens juries almost by chance around the time the Labour Party returned to power in the UK in the late 1990s. While studying for a PhD in biology, I had begun thinking and writing about how to democratise decisions around science policy. I convened a session for the British pressure group for constitutional and electoral reform, Charter 88 (now Unlock Democracy) at their annual conference. The room where tea was served was stacked full of books and pamphlets with ideas for the new government. I think it was there where I chanced upon a booklet called Citizens Juries: Theory Into Practice by Anna Coote and Jo Lenaghan (IPPR 1997). It described the first UK pilot citizens jury that had been undertaken the previous year. Unlike many reports by think-tanks, Coote and Lenaghan’s booklet was very practical. Thanks to my colleague Andy Stirling, I had already read Ortwin Renn’s classic Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation. Within weeks I was planning to adapt the process they outlined on an issue that was rising up the political agenda in the wake of the ‘mad cow disease’ crisis of the last days of New Labour. By the time I had undertaken my first citizens jury, Tony Blair’s new government had already begun commissioning their own jury processes via their allies in the consultancy business. I soon realised that we had been slightly naïve in taking Jack Straw’s at his word when he said that Labour would use such innovations to “strengthen citizenship and people's sense of citizenship”1. Shortly after Straw and his colleagues started getting the results of genuinely non-partisan citizens juries, central government spin-doctors appeared to put a stop to them. Although the processes funded under New Labour sometimes continued to call themselves juries, the processes rarely adopted basic safeguards for fairness and competence2. Like others, I could see other flaws in the model of the citizens jury that New Labour advisors imported from the US. The element of the methodology I sought to improve was how as wide and inclusive a range of people could set the subject of the jury’s discussion. This formed the basis of Citizens Foresight, which I organised through a charitably funded non-governmental organisation called Genetics Forum, in collaboration with SPRU’s Andy Stirling in 1998.
Quote from Rt Hon Jack Straw MP in: Riddell P & Webster P Citizen Straw has his eye on reform, Times, December 29, 1998. 2 See Wakeford T et al. 2008 The jury is out: How far can participatory projects go towards reclaiming democracy?, in Reason P and Bradbury H (eds), Handbook of Action Research (2nd Edition), Sage, New York. Download an early version from: http://bit.ly/SiOcCT 1
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I gave the jury members of Citizen Foresight no choice but to examine the broad area of policy around food and farming. However, the precise options for the future food and farming that formed the focus of their discussions decided through a process that put them in the driving seat, albeit still facilitated by me and Andy Stirling 3. In that way, it began a process that led to the publication of this handbook. It was not the only attempt to make citizens juries and similar techniques more participatory in the UK, though the lack of a effective network of people carrying out and adapting citizens juries has hampered a full picture of what has gone on4. In 2000, Tom Shakespeare and I received a grant from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust that was specifically to design a do-it-yourself citizens jury around an issue relating to science and technology. The handbook that follows is the result. Despite being limited by being trade-marked in the US and by political spin-doctoring by New Labour in the UK, citizens juries still attract tremendous interest thirty years on. I believe this is because the term citizens jury suggests a process with the fairness of a trial by jury and, as a disabled volunteer jury-organiser once said when asked why he kept hobbling along to meetings, for me “jury is about getting justice”5. The continued interest being shown in citizens juries, ten years after its first publication, has prompted me to update this Teach Yourself guide and publish it electronically. The cartoons by Kate Charlesworth seem as fresh and clever as ever. I have mainly updated the text to reflect how I now advise people who are thinking of undertaking a citizens jury. The Revised Edition Our handbook was originally devised as part of an initiative aimed at spreading understanding of a more grassroots-led approach to citizens juries than had been undertaken so far. Within a couple of years of its publication, Teach Yourself Citizens Juries had been used to undertake a range of “do-it-yourself” processes across the world. Ten years on, many of us who have worked on juries and similar processes want to improve the use of juries by reflecting on the different ways jury processes can work. The prompt for this Revised Edition came from a new course, Community Participation in Professional Practice, which is being hosted by the University of Edinburgh. We have left most of the text unchanged, but have now added some questions at the end, allowing readers to reflect on good and bad practice among citizens jury and similar techniques. This is linked to an online discussion forum at www.citizensjury.org. citizensjury.ageofwe.org Tom Wakeford The University of Edinburgh and SPEAKSoc.org, December 2012.
Wakeford T 1999 Citizen Foresight : A tool to enhance democratic policy-making : Food and farming. University of East London and Genetics Forum, London. Download from www.speaksoc.org or directly from http://bit.ly/SFjHKY. 4 See Kashefi E and Keene C 2008 Citizens’ juries in Burnley, UK: from deliberation to intervention. Participatory Learning and Action 58:33-38. (Download from http://pubs.iied.org/G02855.html). 5 Mr Eric Landau, Newcastle Elders Council. 3
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...they can
10 FASCINATING FACTS ABOUTJURIES 1. 12 Angry Men, made in 1957, is perhaps the best known film about a legal jury made in the twentieth century. John Grisham’s 1996 novel, The Runaway Jury was also made into a film. 2. Historian George Macaulay Trevelyan, put the origins of the jury in Britain down to the arrival of Viking invaders, and a Danish fondness for committees. 3. In almost all jury systems around the world, women were excluded from sitting on them for most of their history. In the UK, women were finally allowed to serve on them after the Equal Franchise Act of 1928. 4. India abolished the jury system in 1960, having inherited it at independence from British colonial rule. 5. Judging panels for prizes are often called ‘juries’, though their composition is rarely made at random. 6. The concept of a “Citizens Jury” was first suggested by Ned Crosby, founder of the Jefferson Center in the United States of America in the 1970s. At almost at the same time in Germany, Peter Dienel was developing a similar concept, called Plannunszelle or Planning Cell at the Research Institute for Citizens Participation and Planning Methods. They didn’t meet until 1985. 7. Unlike legal juries, where jurors are sworn to secrecy during a trial, members of a citizens jury can speak to who they like. 8. Two UK Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, announced programmes of citizens juries during their first few days in office in 1997 and 2007 respectively. It appears Brown’s team did not know of their predecessors’ initiative. 9. In the United States, you cannot hold a citizens jury without the permission of the Jefferson Center, who have registered the term as a trademark. 10. By 2012 there had been an estimated 400 initiatives using the term citizens jury held outside the US - mostly in the UK – compared with just 30 conducted by the Jefferson Center in the US.
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THE BENEFITS OF THE JURY MODEL The jury system was exported to the British colonies such as India and Australia, as well as being taken up by other European nations such as Belgium and, more recently, Spain and Russia. Whilst elected governments make the laws, it is juries that are able to decide the innocence or guilt of anyone charged with breaking those laws, making them a key instrument of participatory democracy. Over the centuries juries have achieved an importance to many democracies, yet their powers have often had to be fiercely defended. One senior judge surveying the power of juries to limit Government power over the centuries compared the jury to: “a little parliament... No tyrant could afford to leave a subject’s freedom in the hands of twelve of his countrymen... Trial by jury is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution - it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives”. Lawyer, Jeff Abrahamson, suggests that “no other institution of government rivals the jury in placing power so directly in the hands of citizens, or wagers more on the truth of democracy’s core claim that the people make their own best governors”.
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WHY DO A JURY? itizens juries allow people .
EXPERIENCES OF JURIES
MAIN INGREDIENTS OF A CITIZENS JURY
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Assuming that you want to attract people that you don’t already know, the first question to ask is whether you seek members of your local community, or a group of people from a wider area who already share a common interest that is not merely confined to their locality (such as racism, toxic pollution, or food labels).
GETTING A RANGE OF PEOPLE INVOLVED IN A STEERING GROUP In inviting people to join your steering group you should use as many communication methods as possible – internet, text messages and face-to-face meetings. Try and bend over backwards to accommodate the various needs of people who might want to come to your first meeting.
For example, make the time of different meetings suitable to as wide a range of people as possible.
At your first meeting, the first task is for people to get to know each other a little and talk about why they have come. To make it a bit less formal, why not split everyone into threes or fours for five minutes, and then asking them to introduce the rest of their group to everyone. There are lots of ways of doing “getting to know you” exercises, and if you are not sure ask someone who has run community meetings before. If you do not want to run these meetings on your own, you could always ask them to come along. Next comes your step towards finding a subject for your jury. Ask people to split into their small groups and discuss what issues matter to them. What needs to change to improve things? Tell them that they’ve got about 10 minutes for this exercise. Once they have discussed it, ask them to write down these issues on different coloured pieces of card. These are going to be placed on the wall for everyone to see so the card needs to be big, and use a thick felt-tip, if you can.
After ten minutes ask each group in turn to put their coloured pieces of card on the biggest piece of wall in the room, reading out the card and explaining it as they stick it on (with blue-tac or masking tape). Once the first group has put up their coloured pieces of card, ask the second group whether they can try and put their pieces of card next to the cards from the group one which overlaps with them. Depending on whether people have done this kind of thing before they may need some help. The third group can do the same as the second so that gradually the wall gets covered with “clusters” of issues.
Depending on how many groups are reporting back, this could take anything from a few minutes to around an hour.
Thank everyone for coming and tell them that next week they will be beginning to decide which “cluster” of issues is going to be the subject of a jury. Ask whether anyone found it difficult to attend for any reason, or knows someone who would have liked to have come, but was prevented by something in the meeting’s organisation. Was the time wrong for them? Do they have responsibilities such as caring for a young, elderly or disabled person for which help would be needed for them to come?
Hopefully a good proportion of the people who came to the first meeting will come to the second. But don’t worry if the number is a good deal less. Many people may feel they have had their say at the first meeting, and may want to keep in touch via friends or neighbours who are still involved. Start the meeting by sticking up the coloured pieces of card on the wall in clusters, just as you ended the last meeting. However, in the time between meetings you can have put a big label next to each cluster, which describes it. Some issues might refer to areas of public or private sector such as “transport” or “health”, while others may refer to themes that cut across all sectors, such as “racism” or “ageism”.
For a jury to make a difference, it must neither be pushing at an open door to change, nor hitting its head against a brick wall. In both cases it is better to choose an issue where you all feel there is some chance of making a difference. With this in mind, the next task is to look at the barriers to change for as many of the clusters of similar issues for which you have time and energy. For a good discussion, you need a minimum of three or four people for each group of issues. You can allow anything from five to twenty minutes to discuss the barriers to change. Then each group reports back to the others.
Once all the groups have reported back on this it may be already clear which group of issues has barriers to change that could best be addressed by a citizens jury. Maybe one is currently in the newspaper headlines, but decisions on it are taken by a body on which a jury could never expect to make an impact. On the other hand, an issue that isn’t in the headlines might matter a lot to your participants, and have a chance of making a difference to decisions by a public or private body.
This involves having an imaginary line down the length of the room you are in (or diagonally across it). At one end, are the people who feel strongly that you should have a jury on A, at the other end are those who feel strongly that you should have a jury on B. Anyone who isn’t sure whether to choose A or B, (which may include people who wanted a third or fourth option that lost out in the vote), can stand somewhere on the imaginary line between A and B. Then ask people at A, B and in between to each say why they are standing where they are standing. Once everyone has had their say ask people to move either up or down the line if they have changed their opinion.
Before they vote, remind everyone that their vote should not be cast on what issue they think matters most, but the one in which getting positive change would be most helped by having a jury.
RUNNING A JURY: TASKS FOR THE STEERING GROUP
After a few meetings, you should have a group of people who are beginning to get to know each other, who are committed to the process, and who can share out the tasks. This is your jury’s “Steering Group”. Some tasks can be delegated. Other things must be decided collectively. Different people will have different skills to contribute to the process. But everyone is vital. You may want to consider bringing in an outside facilitator or choosing one of your steering group to run the hearings of the citizens jury. This frees up the rest of the steering group to listen and think about the process, rather than worrying about making the meetings run smoothly. (You would probably have to pay the facilitator.)
Your oversight panel might seem a lot of work to set up, but it is definitely worth it. It acts as a guarantee to those you are trying to influence that they can have confidence in the jury process.
TYPE 1: PEOPLE WITH INFLUENCE AND CONTACTS
The first group have an important role in helping you find people with specialist knowledge who will be good witnesses. If you can get these people to agree to be on your Oversight Panel they are also likely to be able to help you find some key decision-makers who might take the jury’s results on-board.
For a jury on a health issue, for example, people in this group might include a member of the NHS management, a health visitor, a doctor or nurse and even someone from the pharmaceutical industry. For a jury on racism it might include civil rights lawyers, a council anti-racism officer and a member of a black or ethnic minority community organisation.
TYPE 2: PEOPLE WHO VALUE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
The second group of members of your Oversight Panel are important because they will be supportive of the jury process, and might be able to act as sources of advice and constructive criticism on how the process is going. Members of this group could come from a wide range of backgrounds:
local community organisations; business; local councillors; an MP or government official.
The most important thing is that they value what you are doing and might either be able to act as a sounding board if you are encountering problems, and/or advocates for your cause once the jury has reached its conclusion.
RUNNING THE OVERSIGHT PANEL Once you have got an offer from at least three or four people to sit on the oversight panel, you should organise a meeting at a time that is as convenient as possible both for them and your jury planning group.
If a time convenient for everybody cannot be found, you should prioritise times when members of the oversight panel can come, so long as one or two of the jury planning group can be there to explain the process. Oversight panel members may even be potential sources of additional funding for the jury, which is likely to incur quite a few costs relating to postage, travel for jurors and witnesses and room hire.
AGENDA FOR THE OVERSIGHT PANEL MEETING
1.
Explain what you are trying to do with the jury.
2.
Let those who have not been part of the planning ask questions to those who have.
3.
Take suggestions from specialists on who would make good witnesses for the jury.
4.
Ask whether there is anything preventing the members of the oversight panel committing to make sure the results of the jury are considered by decision-makers.
5.
If your group’s funds might be stretched by running a jury, have a frank discussion with any members of the Panel you feel might be sympathetic to see whether they might be willing to provide some funds.
6.
Arrange a second meeting at a point when you have assembled a list of possible witnesses and chosen 15-20 possible members of the jury.
Your recruitment of jurors who are a cross section of the population is vital to the jury process.
THE ELECTORAL ROLE
Currently, many councils have restricted the provision of electoral roll information because of concerns about privacy. However, every council should be able to provide you with an “edited electoral roll”, which contains all the voters who have not ticked a box on their electoral registration form that asks for their details not to be passed to third parties.
When ordering the electoral roll information, you need to specify for which electoral “wards” you want the information. If you are unsure about which wards make up your local area, check with your local reference library.
The content of the letter of invitation and the questionnaire you send to potential jurors should tell them enough about the jury to make them interested in coming along, but without telling them the subject of the jury. To even hint at what the potential jurors might be discussing would leave you open to accusations of bias, because you would be more likely to have people being recruited to the jury with a vested interest in the issue being discussed. The questionnaire enclosed with the letter merely needs to ask a few questions about people’s age and background to get enough of an idea about them to ensure a broad social mix on the jury. Alternatively, you could omit the questionnaire and literally choose the jury at random from the responses to your letter, as in a legal trial. However, this runs the danger of having a jury whose composition becomes an obstacle to a fair process. Imagine a jury on a race issue that was completely composed of one ethnic minority, or solely the majority ethnic group. A SAMPLE LETTER AND QUESTIONNAIRE ARE IN THE “RESOURCES” SECTION
Around a tenth of the UK population are not registered to vote. There could be a number of reasons for this including people having recently moved, having a visual or literacy problem, or objecting to registering. To avoid these people being left out of possible participation in the jury you may want to target them. Some suggestions for doing this are set out in the “Resources” section.
By sending out at least 1000 letters in total, you should ensure you receive enough responses to make up a jury of 12-15 people. If funds are tight, you could ask for volunteers to deliver door-to-door to save postal costs. A professional mailing company can also reduce costs to below second class postal rates so long as you have postcodes for all your addresses.
Unlike legal jury service, which is compulsory, serving on a citizens jury is purely voluntary. If you have funds for it, we recommend offering a small payment - say £10 per weekly session - to jurors as a token gesture for the time and energy they spend. Vouchers for shops are often popular. It will also increase the rate of response to the letters.
CHOOSING THE MEMBERS OF THE JURY
Your jury will never be more than a symbolic representation of opinion within a community. However, we suggest the following rules of thumb: Approximately half of the jury should be male, half female. Include a range of ages with no one age group dominating. If you use a questionnaire, you may want to use the responses you get to ensure that your jury includes a wide variety of life experiences. This might mean including people who come from groups that are often excluded such as ethnic minorities and disabled people, but this will mean your selection is not strictly “random”.
INVITING WITNESSES Your oversight panel will have already suggested a number of names of specialist witnesses for your jury.
...they should: a)
be a good communicator. They should be able to present information in a concise, but jargon-free, style.
b)
have some specialist knowledge of the subject being discussed, either as someone engaged in a profession related to the subject, or someone who studies it in a research institution.
c)
be a good listener who gives clear and frank responses, as much of the time they spend with the jury will be answering questions from them.
As much as is possible your final selection of witnesses should provide balance of different views on an issue, rather than lots of people with similar perspectives.
GETTING A BALANCE OF WITNESSES There may be some perspectives that all of you agree need to be heard by the jury, and others of which you are less sure. A good way round this dilemma is initially to choose a small number of key witnesses for the early sessions with the jurors. Once they have heard from these witnesses you can let the jury decide if they want to hear from witnesses with different information. The number of total witnesses you decide to choose will depend on how much time you have for the jury. As a rough guide, we suggest that each witness should be given approximately two hours with the jury, and that no more than two-thirds of the jury time should be spent with witnesses.
SECOND OVERSIGHT PANEL MEETING
Unless there are serious objections to the profile of the jury you have chosen, you should mainly use this meeting to check with your panel that the witnesses you have selected to give evidence are a reasonable balance. Members of the Oversight Panel may even want to suggest new names at this point, but don’t risk committing yourself to making radical changes too close to the beginning of the jury unless you are sure that the newly suggested witnesses can definitely make the times of the hearings for which they are specified. At the end of this second meeting with the Oversight Panel, your group should have all the information you need to run the jury.
A LOCATION FOR THE JURY
A good jury location for the jury will be easily accessible by public transport and have car-parking facilities. Disabled access will obviously be vital if any of your jurors have physical disabilities. Such facilities will also allow disabled people to come and watch the jury in action, when they would otherwise be excluded. The room you choose should be large enough to allow the jurors to sit round in a circle. Having some tables available will ensure that the jurors who want to can have something to lean on when writing. Tea and coffee making facilities are also essential.
If your jury hearings are in the evening, your location should not be off-putting to people who have to travel home in the dark in the late evening.
RUNNING THE FIRST MEETING OF THE JURY The way in which the first meeting of the jury is run will set the tone for future sessions. We suggest having no witness in the first two hour session of a jury so that you can concentrate on allowing you and the jurors to get to know each other.
Once people have become at ease with working together you should briefly outline what is involved in a citizens jury. You might suggest watching the short film that accompanies this handbook. You could follow the video by asking the jurors to share their thoughts about the process they are about to go through and the subject of the jury. What is their experience of the issue from their own lives? What issues do they think are raised? Finally, you can explain who will be coming to give evidence to them in future weeks. You may want to offer jurors a printed list of these witnesses.
HEARING THE WITNESSES
A few days before they are due to give evidence you might want to contact each witness to remind them what is expected of them in giving evidence to the jury. To allow plenty of time for them to interact with the jury, the witness should only give an initial contribution of 10-15 minutes. This may seem a very short time to your witness, especially if the witness has travelled some distance. However, you can reassure them that the jury will be better able to make use of their knowledge during the remaining two hours if their initial talk is concise.
JARGON-BUSTING “A lot of the witnesses give you a lot of legal jargon that we didn’t understand. It’s just the way these people talk. If they give you a lot of bumph you can hold up the yellow card and get them to explain it so that everybody can understand”. Comment by a Newcastle juror. If you expect a witness presentation to include quite a lot of jargon that not all jurors will understand, we suggest using a “yellow-card” system. This involves asking for a volunteer from the jury (or the whole jury) to monitor the witnesses presentation closely. By holding up their yellow card in front of the witness they can give them the option of either reducing the amount of jargon or explaining each term as they go along.
AFTER THE WITNESS HAS FINISHED Once the witness has provided the necessary clarification, but before jurors start entering a wider discussion, the witness is asked to leave the room where the jury are sitting to allow them a private space in which to discuss what they have heard. During this period, at least one of the steering group might like to stay with the witness and ask them how they felt about the experience of being a witness. Once the jury has had ten minutes or so of discussing the witness presentation via the caterpillar exercise (next page), or any other means, you can ask for volunteers to ask the questions chosen by the group to the witness, who is then invited back into the meeting room. After around twenty minutes of questioning there might be a natural point at which to break so that everyone can have some refreshments.
After each witness, one of you must ask the jury to start thinking what issues the witness presentation raised for them about the subject the jury is discussing. One way of doing this that helps overcome people’s shyness in the first few meetings is to use a ‘ladder’ or ‘caterpillar’ exercise, which gets everyone talking to someone else, without them having to immediately give their thoughts to the whole group, which can be intimidating. To form the caterpillar, ask the members of the jury to place their chairs in two rows that face each other - with each chair opposite another. If there’s an odd number then one of you could join as a listener. After five minutes ask everyone to move along the caterpillar one or two places so that they will be opposite a new person.
After another five minutes ask people to get into larger groups of three or four and write down the common questions that have been raised.
ENDING THE HEARING “It doesn’t matter what background you come from. Some jurors may think they are not as intelligent as the next person. But everybody’s got a contribution. When these witnesses are talking one of the jurors might pick on something that someone else had been thinking to themselves. In the end it’s the case of everyone helping everyone else”. A juror from Newcastle Once you have collected the questions, and found volunteers to ask them, you can bring the witness back into the room and begin the discussion. During this part of the hearing, you need to balance the jury’s desire to ask more and more questions of the evening’s witness with the need to review the evidence. The end of each session is a good time to discuss what extra information the jury would like to have, either in the form of witnesses on particular subjects, or in written form.
BUILDING UP THE RECOMMENDATIONS Once the jury has heard from its first couple of witnesses, jurors may already be mentioning items that they think should form part of their recommendations. Keep a running list of these. If you have the resources to write it, the jury will find it very useful to have notes summarising the main points raised at each session.
USE OF VIDEO Some members of the oversight panel may be curious to know what happens during the jury sessions but be unable to attend themselves. If so, one option is to video the proceedings and pass copies of the tapes to those who are interested. This has the added advantage of providing an archive, which can serve as a useful resource for anyone wanting to understand the process, but that should only be taken having informed the jury and allowed anyone who does not want to be filmed to remain unseen.
PRIVACY Discussing the witnesses presentation may not be the only time when the jury would like some space for themselves. You may want to check at any point as to whether they would prefer if non-members of the jury, including yourselves, could leave the jury to continue their discussions alone.
WRITING THE REPORT For the members of the jury, this will undoubtedly be the most challenging part of the jury process as it means they have to focus on a statement that best summarises what they think would lead to positive change. Hopefully quite a few recommendations, or areas where a recommendation needs to be made, will have been proposed by members of the jury during the witness hearings. An initial task might be to review these with the jury and ask whether they want to delete any on the list or add to it. Another useful exercise might be to ask jurors to rank the areas where a recommendation needs to be made in order of importance - either by a show of hands, or by each of them distributing ten sticky-backed shapes according to the importance they attached to different statements.
This ranking exercise should make the writing of the report easier, as the jury can then go through the list of areas where a recommendation needs to be made in order of priority, though there may be overlaps between these areas.
WHOLE AND SMALL GROUPS “It’s week three and we’re now gelling more, but we need more time to work in small groups”. Juror in Newcastle We strongly suggest attempting to draw up precise recommendations in small drafting groups of three or four people each. Large groups have the disadvantage of tending to allow particularly vocal people on the jury to dominate it. Sometimes these individuals can make it seem that there is consensus agreeing with their individual views when in fact there is not.
VOTING ON THE RECOMMENDATIONS However the recommendations are reached, the final session should allow for a vote on each recommendation, by secret ballot if necessary, so that the unanimity or divisions on the jury for each particular part of the verdict can be gauged.
FINAL APPROVAL & VOLUNTEERS Once the jury has devised its draft verdict, it will be your job to type it up and, if there is time, to circulate the text to jurors before a final meeting where they can approve it. You should also ask for volunteers from the jury to read out the recommendations at the public launch of their report.
Between the jury agreeing its final report and its public launch you need time to not only print the document that you are going to launch, but also to let all the people who should come to the launch know where and when it is happening. Some of them will need plenty of notice.
1.
Make it accessible to those groups whose attendance is most important. This will obviously include the jury themselves and you as organisers. You should consider particular needs such as wheelchair access or a crèche.
2.
The location should, as much as your budget allows, also be appealing to your potential audience. Maybe you want to attract the sort of people who would be impressed by holding the launch in a hotel, town hall or football club. Alternatively, maybe you’d like to launch the report in your own community centre, to demonstrate how high the level of grassroots involvement has been.
You should think carefully about who to ask to chair the launch of the report. Ideally, you should find someone who understands what the jury was trying to achieve, and will allow everyone a say while keeping the momentum of the event going. This might even be one of you, but you might also want to think of someone who is highly regarded but is one step away from the project. Local or national celebrities can make the event seem much more of a story for the media, but it is unlikely that they will be the right person to chair the meeting and they may end up distracting the media’s attention from what you have actually achieved.
Whoever you invite, make sure that you have given them enough notice. It’s a pity for people important to the impact of your jury not to be able to come just because of an avoidable clash in their diary.
BRIEFING THE JURY At your last jury session or on the phone prior to the launch, jurors should be asked to only speak for themselves when answering questions about the jury’s report. While the report should be a collective record of what the whole group thinks, their answers to questions might mistakenly be taken to represent the whole jury, when other jurors might actually disagree with them.
LAUNCH PROGRAMME 1.
You, the organisers, should speak first and introduce the process. Briefly summarise what you did and refer to a detailed description of what happened which you will have written in the introduction to the report.
2.
Volunteers from among the jury should read out either all of their report, or sections of it that they think are most important to highlight.
3.
The chair could then take questions to both the organisers and the jurors. Particularly important are questions from any members of your oversight panel who have come along. Other members of the audience may also want to ask any decision-makers who are present what they are going to do with the report of the jury.
4.
You might want to have a coffee break after this, in which the jury and yourselves could discuss the responses you have had, and brainstorm on what needs to be done next to make sure there is positive change. There are likely to be people in the room who can do something with the jury’s report - now is the time to ask them to do it (and if they say no, to ask them why not?).
5.
Unless they are meant unhelpfully, you should be receptive to criticisms of the process rather than feel threatened by them. No process of this sort can ever be perfect. As long as you’ve been open and honest in the way you have conducted it, hard-nosed critics will only be able to nit-pick about this or that part. People like that will always have something to complain about!
DE-BRIEF AND FOLLOW-UP MEETINGS
A follow-up meeting can allow you to share these with others involved in the process, including witnesses and oversight panel members, if they are willing. It will also allow you to start planning how you will use the jury’s report and the impact it has already made to make sure decision-makers change their policies to improve the particular issue on which you have been focussing.
The people who are likely to take most heed of the citizens jury report are those who have had direct contact with the process, including oversight panel members, witnesses and others who you have involved. Some important questions to re-visit at this stage are: Who makes policy on this issue? If they have not been on the oversight panel, what is the best way to approach them? Will you: a) use the verdict in a softly-softly approach to those in power, which perhaps might involve organising a delegation of the jury’s organisers together with a couple of jurors? b) bring further publicity to the result of your jury by making a public demonstration or undertaking direct action? or c)
join together with other like-minded groups who can learn about the jury and may join with you in pressing for change?
Whether you choose a, b or c will depend on what you think will get results in the long term.
“I think we may still end up having to block the Tyne bridge over this one!” member of the Newcastle jury steering group
Being over-ambitious: Be very realistic about what you can achieve with the money and people that you have available. Better to do something small that works instead of a monster project that fails. Taking short-cuts: If the jury is organised in a rush or on too tight a budget it may lose some of its thoroughness and therefore its credibility. This could reduce the impact of all your hard work. Explaining the jury to others: Many decision-makers think that any view that has not come out of a politician or civil servant’s mouth is likely to be the result of the “usual suspects” with an axe to grind who they can therefore safely ignore. You will need to explain the process to them. If necessary, you may need to go through this manual with them, step-by-step.
USEFUL RESOURCES ICEBREAKING GAMES 1.
Ask each person to introduce themselves by saying their name, with an adjective that starts with the same letter as their name: “Hello, I’m Terrible Tom” “Hello, I’m Glamorous Gayle”.
and/or 2.
Split into pairs. Each tells the other their name and what they had for breakfast (or some other trivial or amusing fact about themselves). Go back into the full group, where each person in turn introduces their partner to the group.
EXAMPLES OF WITNESSES Here are the names and brief details of witnesses from two recent jury processes.
JURY SUBJECT: developing health technologies to improve the quality of life of older people in relation to falls Nel McFadden, activist / researcher on older people’s issues. John Bond, Professor of Health Services Research. Sheila Payne, Professor of Palliative Care. Clive Ballard, falls expert, Institute of Ageing and Health. Rose Anne Kenny, doctor and director of a hospital falls clinic. Vera Bolter, retired community worker and co-ordinator of Old Spice Theatre Group. Nigel Baber, Medicines Control Agency. Gary Ford, Consultant and Professor of Pharmacology.
JURY SUBJECT: GM food and crops Nigel Poole, retired from GM company, AstraZeneca. Michael Hart, small farmer. Mike May and Steve Hughes, GM scientists. Mark Avery, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Paul Rylott, Bayer Crop Science (manufacturer of GM crops). Sue Dibb, National Consumer Council (official consumer watchdog). Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy, City University. Sue Mayer, Genewatch UK (non-governmental GM watchdog). Walter Pengue, expert on effect of GM on poorer countries, University of Buenas Aires, Argentina.
EXAMPLES OF OVERSIGHT PANELS Here are the names and brief details of oversight panels from two recent jury processes.
JURY SUBJECT: developing health technologies to improve the quality of life of older people in relation to falls Location: Newcastle Representatives of the local jury Steering Group Claire Abley, Falls Co-ordinator, Newcastle NHS Trust. Sue Blennerhasset, Integrated Health Co-ordinator, Newcastle City Council. Vera Bolter, Newcastle Elders Council. Pamela Denham, Older People’s Champion, Primary Care Trust, Newcastle NHS Trust. Barbara Douglas, Newcastle Healthy Cities Project. Sheila Gibbon, Alzheimer’s Society, Newcastle. Julian Hughes, Consultant, Centre for the Health of the Elderly, Newcastle General Hospital. Tessa Harding, Director of Policy, Help the Aged UK, London. Julie Tait, Age Concern, Newcastle.
JURY SUBJECT: GM food and crops. Locations: Hertfordshire and Tyneside Fiona Barbagello, British Association for the Advancement of Science. Simon Bright, Syngenta (GM company). Eric Brunner, Department of Epidemiology, University College London. Gary Kass, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. Tom MacMillian, Food Ethics Council (non-governmental). Michel Pimbert, International Institute for Environment and Development. Sue Weldon, Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, University of Lancaster. Brian Wynne, risk expert, University of Lancaster. Representatives of the four funding partners - Consumers’ Association, Greenpeace, the Co-operative Group and Unilever. Representatives of the PEALS citizens jury project steering group.
MAKING A TIMETABLE An early priority is to draw up a rough timetable for your citizens jury. Think of the different tasks, the amount of time people can contribute, and be realistic about the time you should allow for each stage of the process. 1.
Choosing the topic
2.
Recruiting the jury members
3.
Recruiting the advisory group
4.
Jury introductory meetings
5.
Jury meetings with witnesses
6.
Jury deliberation and verdict
7.
Writing the report
8.
Launching the jury report and verdict
9.
Using the report
DRAWING UP A BUDGET There are costs associated with a citizens jury. Some can be reduced by using volunteers and by getting support in kind from other organisations. But you will still have to do some fundraising to pay for the process. •
room hire
•
travel expenses for jury
•
payments for jury
•
postage and printing of recruitment letter
•
facilitator fees and travel expenses
•
witness expenses
•
oversight panel expenses
•
report and launch event
RECRUITING PEOPLE NOT REGISTERED TO VOTE There are all sorts of reasons why people in your area may not be on the list of electors available to you. Some may not have registered, while others may have ticked a box that means you are not allowed access to their name and address. However, neither of these factors mean that these people will be any less willing to take part. An easy way of making sure you don’t exclude these people is to take around a fifth of your invitation letters (see below) and post them through the doors of streets that are in electoral wards outside those for which you have obtained lists from the council. You may also want to either produce a large-print or Braille version for people with sight problems. Although they often have people to read things for them, people with literacy problems may be best reached by those in the local area who are in direct contact with such individuals, if you can find them.
SAMPLE DOCUMENTS example of a letter to recruit potential jurors a questionnaire for potential jurors
EXAMPLE OF A LETTER TO RECRUIT POTENTIAL JURORS Dear Resident, We are writing to invite you to carry out jury service in a Citizens Jury process. A citizens jury is a little like a legal jury. The jury will hear from witnesses and come to a verdict. But unlike a legal jury, the process is informal and citizens jury service is not compulsory. The subject “on trial” is an issue of national importance, rather than a person accused of breaking the law. The aim of the jury is to improve the lives of people and of future generations. A group of concerned people have been working since spring 2002 on running their own jury made up of fellow citizens. What does being a juror involve? As a juror, all your expenses would be met, including return travel. A crèche will be provided for those with children (or alternatively, the cost of baby-sitting at home can be covered within an agreed limit). The cost of covering other care responsibilities can also be met. You will also receive gift tokens from high-street stores to the value of £10 for each jury meeting. As a juror, you will be part of an important event which will be taken notice of by politicians and other decision-makers. The event may be covered by the media, though as a juror you have the right to maintain privacy and confidentiality if you wish. What is a juror’s duty? Jurors will be required to attend ten jury meetings. Ten meetings will take place on xxx Your participation in the full duration of these ten meetings is very important. However, if unavoidable, you may miss a maximum of two meetings by prior arrangement. If you would be willing to act as a juror in this process, we would be grateful if you could complete the questionnaire and return it to us by xxx at the address overleaf. Your responses will help us to ensure that the jury is diverse and balanced. How will I know if I have been selected to be a juror? The Citizens Jury Steering Group will select eighteen jurors from the questionnaires returned. If you have been selected, you will be contacted by the Steering Group with further details. We look forward to receiving your completed questionnaire. If you have any questions, you can contact us on telephone xxx, mentioning that your enquiry relates to the “Citizens Jury questionnaire”. Yours faithfully, Citizens Jury Steering Group
A QUESTIONNAIRE FOR POTENTIAL JURORS Yes, I am interested in putting my name forward as a potential jury member. All information contained in this questionnaire is strictly confidential, and will be used solely for the purpose of jury selection by the Citizens Jury Steering Group.
Name:
.................................................................................................................
Address:
.................................................................................................................
..................................................... Telephone: ......................................
Age (please circle your age-range): 16-18
18-23
24-30
31-50
51-65
over 66
Asian
Chinese
Other (please state)
Ethnic origin (please circle): White
Black
Do you have any special requirements?
..........................................................
(e.g. wheelchair access, interpreting, sign language)
Current or most recent employment:
..........................................................
Which newspaper do you read, if any?
..........................................................
By signing below I give my consent under the Data Protection Act for the information above to be used for the sole purpose of this project.
Signed ...........................................................
Date ..................................................
This form should be returned to the address below to reach us no later than xx, 200x xxxx
Twelve questions to consider As part of the Community Participation course at the University of Edinburgh, we ask students to plan their own jury-type process and consider 12 key questions about them. These are: 1. If you wanted jurors to be able to use the results of the jury for an on-going process, what considerations should guide the way you involve people in the jury, in addition to the issues mentioned in the previous pages? For example, if there are individuals in the community from which the jury is drawn who suffer prejudice or other forms of oppression, what proportion of the jury should be made up of such people? 2. What might you consider in facilitating your jury to allow everyone on it to get a fair say while ensuring the group remains a comfortable space for discussion? 3. How will you ensure that jury members feel confident in their own knowledge and expertise on an issue, so they can tell their stories and question witnesses with confidence? 4. How can you ensure that you and jurors are able to collectively assess how the jury is going as takes place, and improve it if necessary? 5. How could you plan collaborating with external organisations in order that they can take the issues that have been raised forward, both during and after the jury process? 6. What are the most effective ways of communicating what happened in the jury to those who have not been directly involved? 7. How could members of the jury conduct their own research on an issue, rather than relying on information and opinions from third parties? 8. How do you defend yourselves as facilitators of a jury against accusations from some quarters that the jury might be being ‘fixed’ to reach a particular pre-determined outcome? 9. How will you ensure the subject of the jury is discussed in sufficient depth and with enough balance to ensure that the results cannot be dismissed as the result of a superficial, biased or sensationalist process? 10. What opportunities or limitations might arise if your jury takes place as a piece of educational theatre as well as, or instead of, a rational process of debate? 11. What elements should be included in launch and discussion events that will enable effective reflection on the jury process, ideally by as many of those involved as possible? 12. Could the same objectives be better met via a different methodology one involving a jury-type approach? Although filmed back in 2003, the film produced by Swingbridge Media provides useful illustrations of the issues raised here. Further discussion and resources can be found at citizensjury.org.
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Acknowledgements During the fifteen years that I have been working on participatory approaches many friends and colleagues have helped me to develop as a facilitator, strategist, analyst and, most of all, bricoleur. My somewhat naïve initial thinking has been transformed through repeated cycles of action and reflection with them. All the doing and the thinking in which I have taken part has been in the company of some remarkable people in a variety of collaborative roles – co-facilitators, members of juries, stakeholders, critics and logistics co-ordinators. I first came across citizens’ juries thanks to a pamphlet by Anna Coote and Jo Lenaghan and a book edited by Ortwin Renn. Jo played a major part in the launch of the provisional conclusions of Citizen Foresight in 1998, a process that pioneered the ethos co-production that inspired the first edition of this book. Vital input on multi-criteria approaches, allowing jurors to decide on the issues to be discussed by the jury, independently of how professionals framed the issues came from Andy Stirling. Although it was me who accepted the Caroline Walker Trust Award later that year, Citizen Foresight was a collective effort with Genetics Forum, chaired by Eric Brunner, and the Consumers Association, particularly Julie Sheppard. In 1999 I began collaborating in the use of juries and other participatory approaches in India, where people such as Satya Murty, Biraj Patnaik, Kavitha Kuruganti, Vinod Pavarala, Andrea Cornwall, Katherine Pasteur and P. V. Satheesh were among those who helped me understand how juries might work in that context. By 2001, Michel Pimbert and I were working with these and other Indian colleagues on Prajateerpu, which led to an intense period of political controversy in which Rukmini Rao, Sagari Ramdas, N.Madhoo Peter Reason, Shiv Visvanathan, Brian Wynne, James Keeley, Patrick Mulvany and Robert Chambers greatly contributed both to my learning and to our efforts at bringing about a more participatory research and policy process. In the UK, Brazil and India, Fiona Hale has worked alongside me since 2000 – sometimes leading processes, other times collaborating – always constructively criticising and supporting my efforts tirelessly. She and I took an equal part in facilitating the Do-It-Yourself Citizens’ Jury in Newcastle upon Tyne that directly led to this book. The project was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, with the active support of Trust Secretary Stephen Pittam, and managed by our friend and colleague Tom Shakespeare. Jan Reed, Vera Bolter, Barbara Douglas and all the members of the Older People’s Steering Group played a vital role in reviewing the text from the perspective of experts-by-experience. We later found that almost simultaneously a team based in Lancashire led by Elham Kashefi and Chris Keene, had undertaken a remarkably similar set of jury-based processes and we started to work together and learn from each other. Between 2003 and this second, 2012 edition of this e-book, I have collaborated in, or supported others in, the organisation of countless jury-type processes, ranging in subject matter from GM foods, alcohol and illegal drug related harm to nanotechnology and rough-sleeping in the UK and abroad. I would particularly like to thank Jasber Singh, Pauline Wilson, Bano Murtuja, Peter Bryant, Irem Haq, Pummi Mattu, Geoffrey Randall, Athol Halle, Ev Beard, Mark Oley, Polly Billington, Edward Anderson, Emma Stone, Alan Irwin, Les Levidow, Catherine Purvis, Benoît Derenne, Tanguy Vanloqueren, Betty Nguyen, Anne Galbraith, Tom Martin and the members of juries. Community film-maker Hugh Kelly at Swingbridge Media helped jurors and facilitators use film to document many juries. In doing so he has posed many pertinent questions that have helped sharpen the thinking of many of those who have been involved in them. Jan Reed, Glenda Cook and Jackie Haq are among those who have produced constructively critical independent assessments and reviews of some of the juries in which I have been involved, based on interviews with both the jurors and the steering groups of DIY jury processes, which have contributed to improved understandings and practice. Though not directly involved, my thinking about citizens’ juries and participatory processes in general have been greatly enriched by Sarah Cunningham-Burley, Celia Davies, Margaret Turner, Oliver Escobar, Rachel Pain, Tilly Hale, Parveen Akhtar and the late Duncan Fuller. While I am grateful to all the people and organisations listed here, any mistakes and mis-interpretations are my own. An extensive set of resources, including links to other people and relevant initiatives can be found at citizensjury.org, a website designed by ADQ Design. Thanks to Kate Charlesworth for her perfectly conceived and beautifully drawn cartoons and to Kathryn Dunne at the University of Edinburgh for the design and layout of this revised edition.
Tom Wakeford, November 2012 67
