Failure to recall: Indications from the english and welsh civil and social justice survey of the relative severity and incidence of civil justice problems

Abstract

Purpose – Concerns about expenditure on legal aid in England and Wales have led to greater focus on ‘value for money’ and increased strategic targeting of resources. To inform targeting, the English and Welsh Civil and Social Justice Survey has been used to investigate the relative severity of different civil justice problem types. Thus, the survey has included a range of severity indices and related questions. However, this study takes a different approach in exploring how a seeming ‘defect’ of the survey, failure of autobiographical memory, may shed some of the clearest light on not just the issue of problem severity but also problem incidence.Methodology/approach – We examine failures of autobiographical memory of civil justice problems and ask what they can tell us about problem severity.Findings – We find that failures of autobiographical memory provide a useful guide to relative severity of civil justice problems of different types. They also provide a means to more accurately estimate the prevalence of problems.Originality/value of paper – This paper is the first to examine the relative severity and incidence of civil justice problems through an analysis of recall patterns.

Citation

Pleasence, P., Balmer, N.J. and Tam, T. (2009), "Failure to recall: Indications from the english and welsh civil and social justice survey of the relative severity and incidence of civil justice problems", Sandefur, R.L. (Ed.) Access to Justice (Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 43-65. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-6136(2009)0000012006