Fixing BC’s Justice System With Regular People

I bumped into this video on Youtube where a person was simply talking about ideas on how the justice system can be changed for the better in his views in an effort to reduce things like the extraordinary delays in processing cases. For the most part, he was talking about how you shouldn’t need to be say a lawyer or a judge to help judge a case, so to speak.

He talked about this interesting example in a village where there was a mini “court” that consisted mainly of people in the community. Essentially, both sides were able to state their case and afterwards literally anyone in the community that had something to say or ask about it would. Apparently the whole process took like a day only and a resolution was met. You can see the video here:

While that may sound stupid to a lot of people, I was thinking as in many ways it’s no different than having a designated “jury” except in this scenario that “jury” is opened to everyone that is interested in the issue. I guess another debatable point that was mentioned would be is the only real way to fix the system is to allow people other than lawyers to be say the decision maker? With my limited knowledge of the current system for example, the only way a person can be a “judge” is if they have been a lawyer and are voted amongst people who are in the industry. That would make perfect sense on why it feels like the whole process was built for lawyers and judges as it essentially is.

I was even thinking before with my court case, imagine if it was as simple as both parties are in a designated room where the whole thing is live streamed for everyone in the community to judge and question. Maybe it’s just me too, but that sounds a heck of a lot cheaper even for archiving purposes rather than an individual having to pay like $800+ dollars for a “transcript.” Makes it more accessible too if say there was a publically funded site where anyone and everyone can have the ease of accessing the cases to reference.

Like now for example, there is no way an average individual is going to pay like $800 to catch up on the latest cases in town so that they can evaluate if the system is working or not per se. In my view too, that is one of the biggest reasons on why it doesn’t seem like anything gets fixed or changed as people simply don’t have the firsthand knowledge of what is really happening in those court rooms other than the sensational stories that get published in the media. Overall though, I agree with the notion that more “regular” people are needed to fix this situation.

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