Introduction

This chapter explores how the pandemic has affected access to advice and redress for marginalized groups. Already marginalized communities are likely to be impacted the most by the pandemic. Yet, we know relatively little about how members of these groups are accessing the justice system, and what can be done to improve their capacity to obtain advice, support and redress. In addressing these questions, the project builds upon, and seeks to extend, existing work about marginalized groups that are alienated by the justice system (Halliday and Morgan 2013; Gill and Creutzfeldt 2018) and whose relationships to authority are characterized by a context of structural disempowerment (Kyprianides et al 2020). Additionally, it is critical to understand people's inaction when faced with a legal problem. Existing research based on legal needs surveys has demonstrated that those experiencing the greatest social and economic disadvantage and marginalization are often the least likely to take any action in response to a rights-based problem (Pleasence et al 2013); in particular, those people who do nothing in response to a problem experienced, which is relatively common in both housing and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) contexts. This chapter discusses the interview data through the lens of access to justice and trust in justice. However, here, we also apply the lens of digital and legal capabilities (digital legal consciousness) to help understand people's emerging attitudes towards the digital justice system.

By applying the lens of digital and legal capabilities to our data, we were able to tease out the relationship people have with the (online) justice system. Those who are ‘digitally assisted, legally unable’ (Type 3) – for example, the SEND children's parents we interviewed – become alienated from the justice system because they are not able to identify that the problems they are facing might be legal ones and where they can turn to for help. This group is on the margins of being digitally excluded, but if they manage to seek help, as some of our interviewees did, then they become able to obtain assistance in legal and digital access. Although these people have low digital capabilities and low legal capabilities, with assistance, as shown by our interview data, they can access the digital justice system.