Good afternoon, and thank you for the invitation to contribute to this committee's work.
I grew up on the West Island of Montreal at a time when anglophones weren't required to be fluent in both of Canada's official languages. I moved to Melbourne shortly after the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup. So I would like to apologize to all the francophones in the room for the interpreters here today.
I am sure this committee agrees juries bring the values, standards, and expectations of our community into the courtroom, and they contribute in a significant way to the administration of justice. The Juries Act establishes the juries commissioner role and as many deputies as are required to administer the act.
The Juries Commissioner’s Office ensures a sufficient number of Victorian citizens, broadly representative of the community, are available to serve as jurors in supreme court and county court trials.
There are 14 jury districts across Victoria. Melbourne is the largest by far, with 13 other regional locations of varying size and capacity. While civil jury trials are still available to parties, most jury trials are in the criminal jurisdiction, and most are heard before a judge of the county court of Victoria.
The Juries Act deals with compensation for injury during jury service and states, “If a person suffers personal injury arising out of or in the course of jury service, compensation is to be paid....” Our duty of care under this section of the act extends to anyone attending for jury service, whether empanelled on a jury or not.
In any given year in Victoria approximately 170,000 people are randomly selected from the Victorian electoral roll and receive a notice of selection for jury service. This notice includes a questionnaire whereby we assess citizens' eligibility as prospective jurors. We provide citizens with an opportunity to apply to be excused for good reason.
From there, approximately 70,000 people are summoned for jury service. At this stage, citizens are again given an opportunity to apply to be excused.
A few months from first receiving their notice of selection, approximately 20,000 people attend courts across the state as summoned. In groups called jury pools, they sit through an orientation, and we reinforce information previously given regarding our expectation of their availability, reminding them of their opportunity to apply to be excused.
Then in groups of 25 to 40 people called jury panels, they go into courtrooms for the empanelment process. This occurs approximately 600 times a year, as we have about that many jury trials, of which fewer than 100 would be civil trials with juries of six people. On that math, about 6,600 Victorian citizens a year serve as jurors.
Most people find the jury service rewarding and most leave with a sense of achievement. Others find the experience not so rewarding, and we tell them this is understandable.
As this committee appreciates, jury service represents a significant disruption to a person’s life. Jurors are away from their work and home environment, sometimes for weeks or even months. They listen to and digest evidence often detailing the most horrific of human behaviour. They discuss these details with 11 strangers in foreign surroundings, and we ask them to reach a verdict, the impact of which will resonate with the accused, the victim or victims, witnesses, and many other members of our community for years to come, or forever.
This is something most people will never experience and for some who do, we understand it may take some time and support to process that experience.
Victoria has had a juror support since 2004. For the first many years of this program, the default approach was telephone counselling, but face-to-face sessions were offered as deemed necessary by the counsellors.
Our service provider was a two-person operation, but very professional, competent, and always available. The only issue? They were Melbourne-based, which limited the opportunity for in-person counselling for regional jurors.
In late 2015, we negotiated an agreement with the provider of Court Services Victoria’s juror support program, whereby the same type of service offered to employees became available to citizens participating in jury service.
This current provider leverages a network of counselling services across the state, offering counselling and coaching support from qualified and registered psychologists and social workers.
There is a telephone number operating 24-7 that jurors call to book an appointment. If a juror indicates an immediate need for support, or the call centre attendee suspects there's a need for immediate attention, a telephone counselling session is arranged as soon as possible, but under normal circumstances, jurors use this phone number to a book a counselling session, which can be arranged to take place in person, via telephone, or through a video conference connection, according to the juror’s preference.
Our approach is as follows. There are no restrictions as to why a juror could access the juror support program. It could be to seek support after hearing evidence in a trial, to work through personality clashes with other jurors, or just to talk about their experience without breaching jury confidentiality.
The program can be accessed by anybody who attends for jury service, whether selected on a trial or not. Legislative duty of care aside, our experience is that the arraignment process has the potential to harm one person as much as a two-week trial may affect another.
The counsellor has the discretion to schedule as many sessions as he or she deems necessary for individuals, but we have an arrangement whereby a senior clinical manager will call me should an individual need more than four sessions.
From January 2016 to December 2017 the uptake is as follows. In 2016 we had 17 jurors access the program. Of those, 14 were from Melbourne, and three were from regional Victoria. Nine of those chose a face-to-face session, and eight of them chose to go through the telephone. In 2017 we had eight people access the program, six from Melbourne and two from regional Victoria. Five of them chose to access it face-to-face and three by telephone.
The average number of hours per juror is just over two hours. For the issues that were presented—and these are broad categories—in 2016, four people presented with trauma, 10 with personal stress, and three with anxiety. In 2017, four presented with trauma, three with personal stress, and one with anxiety.
All issues presented related to or were triggered by the court cases. That is, all 25 people who accessed the juror support program over the last two years had been empanelled on a jury.
I want to thank the committee and you, Chairman, for this opportunity to present to this committee. I look forward to answering any questions you may have.