As an organisation run by and for our members, magistrates’ voices are very much at the centre of all that we do—whether that be creating tools to support their development, influencing decision makers on their behalf, educating the public about the magistracy, designing services to support them in performing this most significant of voluntary roles, or putting on events to connect them.
One of the strengths of our membership—and of the magistracy more broadly—is its diversity. Drawn from the communities they serve, magistrates volunteer their time to help ensure effective local justice. It is crucial that they reflect their communities—in terms of age, sexuality, gender identity, background, employment type and other characteristics—because everyone seeking justice should feel that courts are accessible to them. We also know from dozens of peer-reviewed studies that decision quality is improved when teams are diverse.
That is why, earlier this year, we backed the government’s drive to recruit a more diverse bench and started our own ‘Faces of the magistracy’ campaign to showcase the diversity of our membership and our inclusivity as an organisation. Under this banner, we’ve:
- Supported our members to speak to the media about the importance of diversity in the magistracy.
- Created a suite of promotional materials that better represent us as an organisation.
- Launched a blog series to enable members to share their experiences of and perspectives on volunteering as a magistrate.
- Participated in awareness events such as LGBT+ history month, Neurodiversity celebration week, Pride, South Asian heritage month, Black history month, Trustees’ week and Volunteers’ week to celebrate the contribution of and show our support to members from groups that are underrepresented in the magistracy.
- Asked our members to go on camera to tell us more about what they enjoy most about being magistrates and provide advice to others from similar backgrounds who are considering applying.
- Published a virtual gallery of our members—an idea conceived by our Black, Asian and minority ehnic network—to bring a human face to the 650-year-old institution.
We hope you’ve enjoyed meeting our members over the last few months and look forward to sharing many more of their stories, including via the #MagistrateMonday social media campaign we launched today to highlight the individual contribution of magistrates.
