In Franz Kafka’s haunting short story, Before the Law, an ordinary person (described as a “countryman”) seeks to enter the law only to discover a gatekeeper whose formidable personal presence and vague threats of even fiercer gatekeepers keep him stalled at the law’s entrance. The seeker spends his entire life imploring the gatekeeper to let him in, never daring to attempt to evade him. In the end, he comes to know (spoiler here) that this gate, from which he was denied entry, was made only for him.
Modern students of the legal system have long studied the role of gatekeepers, both the intermediaries like lawyers whose help is crucial to accessing justice, and institutional rules and norms that favor repeat players over first time users of the courts. Rarely, (but see, Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, Crook County (2016)), however, do we, like Kafka, explore the physical (and perhaps metaphysical) barriers to equal justice. In an important analysis of data from a broader ethnographic and qualitative interview based study of ordinary people’s experiences with accessing courts, Spatial Burdens of State Institutions: The Case of Criminal Courthouses, Matthew Clair, Jesus Orozco and Iris Zhang spotlight the spatial environments of court houses and how they contribute to complex patterns of inequality and paternalistic and punitive forms of poverty governance. The authors highlight two kinds of power effects of court spatial conditions. There is the direct effect on court users of the environment in and around the courthouse and how that can shape the emotional experience of accessing justice institutions. There is also a secondary effect when court-based burdens cause a person to have to seek additional state institutional intervention (like a person who loses their job because of the time involved in attending court hearings and must apply for unemployment or food support). Together, these create a distinctively spatial dimension to poverty governance.
The authors’ multiyear study focused on two courthouses in Silicon Valley (Santa Clara, County, California). One was the main county courthouse in downtown San Jose (the largest city in the county and one of the largest in the state in terms of population and area), which is surrounded by high-speed roads and parking lots, and lacks nearby affordable restaurants. The other was the Palo Alto branch court, which sits in a high-income area full of stores, restaurants and amenities. The authors and their collaborators undertook two years of fieldwork and multiple interviews with court users in the period following the COVID 19 closures.
One feature of geographic variation around inequality that has long been of interest to social scientists and lawyers involves spatial distance. We speak routinely now of “food deserts” to describe the way poorer neighborhoods often lack access to affordable sources of healthy food (like larger grocery stores). This consideration is relevant to the courthouse story as well. For some defendants, especially those not in custody, and for their family members, the long distance and the lack of easy public transit across the county makes the Palo Alto courthouse a special burden. Likewise, in court studies, the rural/urban divide has often been spotlighted as capturing major disparities in the resources and infrastructures of justice (courthouses, lawyers, law enforcement). But objective distance and the rural urban divide is only one dimension of geographic power effects. The authors focus on four dimensions that emerge as significant from their interviews and ethnographic observations: functional distance (objective distance plus the various barriers like transit, parking, and traffic patterns); neighborhood social life (the way the collective built and social environment may be welcoming or unwelcoming); the exterior form of the courthouse (how it appears and how it can be entered); and interior built forms (interior barriers, aids to navigation or arrival, and complexity).
While the interviews included people involved in non-criminal proceedings, the significant effects were most concentrated on those in criminal cases, and even those involved in civil matters were more affected if they were already criminalized. The qualitative research surfaces many fascinating details that will be especially interesting to those teaching clinical and practice related courses involving predominantly poor communities and to those researching or teaching on criminal courts. The authors make many surprising findings, including that in-custody defendants have an easier path to court since they are generally brought close to the courtroom for their hearings and then escorted in. Some findings are not so surprising but nonetheless important. For example, disabled people face daunting obstacles downtown in high traffic wide streets and frequently broken elevators and doorways.
Several findings struck me as particularly interesting. The downtown San Jose courthouse, as is the case with many large city downtown courthouses and in some smaller cities, is located as part of a clustering of other carceral institutions. These clusters typically include a jail, the police headquarters, and sometimes additional federal jails or immigration detention facilities. This clustering means that persons—defendants out of custody, but also witnesses, victims, family members, or jurors—must confront institutions that may trigger deep trauma from past encounters. They also face real risks of being stopped, arrested, or deported while passing by. The presence of encampments of unhoused people, one of which was present near the downtown San Jose court house during the research period, and which can be found in many downtowns, carries its own package of potential triggering experiences, most notably exposure to drug use and sales for those who may already be under some kind of criminal supervision or are in recovery from drug addiction. The logics of creating carceral clusters are likely driven by land costs and urban development planning, but have unintended consequences for those who may experience, in the shadows or all those carceral institutions, something like a “carceral citizenship.”
Interior design and scale also matter. Large courthouses (downtown San Jose has 30 courtrooms) can be incredibly confusing to those who are first time users. This is compounded by hidden front entrances, long security lines that may snake in front of a courthouse, and lack of adequate signage for finding the right court room. Those assigned to a more suburban courthouse will find the entry to the building and related access issues like parking or bike access far easier, and restaurants more abundant, but may find the differences in class and racial make-up around the courthouse alienating. Inside, courtrooms are generally poorly designed to facilitate audio or visual access by the public (and sometimes even defendants) to the statements being made from the bench, by lawyers, or by court clerks. The resulting confusion and chaotic soundscape undoubtedly contribute to a sense of dehumanization.
At a time when much interest is generated by the creation of innovative new courts for defendants who are veterans, unhoused, or in need of mental health or substance abuse treatment, Spatial Burdens is a powerful reminder that the past will live on in the built environment, both around and inside the courthouse. Until we change those, the messages being sent by well-intended substantive reforms may be muddled at best. In the meantime, too many ordinary people will remain psychologically stalled before the gates of the law.
