Citizen Juries
Description:
Citizen juries involve the wider community in the decision-making process. Participants are engaged as citizens with no formal alignments or allegiances rather than experts. Citizen juries use a representative sample of citizens (usually selected in a random or stratified manner) who are briefed in detail on the background and current thinking relating to a particular issue, and asked to discuss possible approaches, sometimes in a televised group. Citizen juries are intended to complement other forms of consultation rather than replace them. Citizens are asked to become jurors and make a judgement in the form of a report, as they would in legal juries. The issue they are asked to consider will be one that has an effect across the community and where a representative and democratic decision-making process is required.
Citizen juries can be used to broker a conflict, or to provide a transparent and non-aligned viewpoint.
Citizen jurors bring with them an intrinsic worth in the good sense and wisdom born of their own knowledge and personal experience. Citizen juries provide the opportunity to add to that knowledge and to exchange ideas with their fellow citizens. The result is a collective one, in which each juror has a valuable contribution to make.1
Objectives:
Citizen juries aim to draw members of the community into participative processes where the community is distanced from the decision-making process or a process is not seen as being democratic.
Outcomes:
A citizen jury will deliver a considered report with recommendations for future actions or directions.
Uses/strengths:
- Can be used to draw members of the community into participative processes where the community is distanced from the decision-making process or a process is not seen as being democratic.
- Strives to improve representation in participative processes by engaging a cross section of the community in the jury.
- Can be used to moderate divergence and provide a transparent process for decision making.
- Provides a transparent participatory process which can be seen to be independent and credible.
- Provides a public democracy mechanism.
- Provides citizens with an opportunity to develop a deep understanding of the issue.
- Involves ordinary citizens.
- Pinpoints fatal flaws or gauges public reaction and opinion.2
Special considerations/weaknesses:
- Jury members need to be representative of the community in consideration.
- Setting up involves selecting jurors and experts and planning the timing, as it takes up to four days to run the jury.
- Moderators may be required, and would need to be hired.
- Everyone involved needs to be clear about the results and how they will be used. Ahead of the event, time needs to be allowed to engage jury, hire facilitator, put together briefing or background papers and contact ‘experts’.
- Allow up to four days for the jury to consider its ‘verdict’.
- The commissioning body must follow recommendations or explain why.
Resources required:
- Venue rental
- Catering
- Staffing
- Moderator/facilitator
- Other facilitators
- Overhead projectors
- Data projectors
- Slide projector
- Projection screen
- Props for working in groups (pens, paper, pins, etc.)
- Jurors’ fees
Can be used for:
- Engage community
- Develop community capacity
- Develop action plan
- Communicate an issue
Number of people required to help organise:
- Medium (2-12 people)
Audience size:
- Medium (10-30)
Time required:
- Long (> 6 months)
- Medium (6 weeks - 6 months)
Skill level/support required:
- High (Specialist skills)
Cost:
- High (> AUD$10,000)
- Medium (AUD$1,000 - AUD$10,000)
Participation level:
- High (Stakeholders participate in decision)
Innovation level:
- High (Innovative)
Method:
- Select a broadly representative group of approximately 8-12 people. Determine a question important to the issue being considered or develop a series of options for the jury to consider.
- Brief jurors on the rules of the proceedings, and allow them two-four days to come to a recommendation.
- Provide expert witnesses to brief the jury who can be cross-examined and who can spend time discussing the issue with the jury.
- Engage independent moderator(s) to assist the process of deliberation.
- At the agreed time, arrange a presentation from the panel and/or collect the jury’s report, which should outline their recommendations.
- Publish the report and recommendations (this would normally be done by the commissioning body).
- If the recommendations of the citizen jury are not followed up, publish the reasons for not following up (this would normally be done by the commissioning body).
References:
- Abelson, J, Forest, PG, Eyles, J, Smith, P, Martin, E, & Gauvin, FP (2001) ‘Deliberations about deliberation: issues in the design and evaluation of public consultation processes’, McMaster University Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis, Research Working Paper 01- 04, June 2001. Available online: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/compareparticipation.pdf
- Crosby, N (1995) ‘Citizen juries: one solution for difficult environmental questions’ in Renn, O, Webler, T, & Wiedemann, P (eds.) Fairness and competence in citizen participation: evaluating models for environmental discourse, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston
- Coote, A & Lenaghan, J (1997) Citizens’ juries: theory into practice, Institute for Public Policy Research, London
- New Economics Foundation (1998) Participation works: 21 techniques, New Economics Foundation
- Niemeyer, S & Blamey, R (2000) Deliberation in the wilderness: the far north Queensland citizens’ jury, Australian National University, Canberra. Available online: http://cjp.anu.edu.au/docs/FNQCJ.pdf
- http://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/enn/enndec01.htm
- http://www.jefferson-center.org
- http://www.iap2.org
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1 http://www.jefferson-center.org