Trend Report: Charging for Justice

This SDG 16.3 Trend Report shares results from our investigation into how money flows in the justice sector.

The justice sector has long struggled to serve the broader population. In the pages that follow, we investigate how money flows in the justice sector and suggest ways to free up the resources needed to provide equal access to justice for all.

Instead of being a cost or a burden on society, people-centred justice delivery can become a thriving sector of the economy, contributing to GDP and employment with scalable services that can be delivered sustainably.

Our team of expert justice researchers suggests justice can be delivered with great benefits to meeting the outcomes that people seek. Effective justice services for all strengthen relationships between people and communities and help contribute to economic growth.

Delivering justice is mostly a matter of resources. We have to mobilise knowledge, human resources and money. Governments might allocate a proportion of national justice budgets to financing high and low-tech innovations. Donors and funders might throw their support behind local initiatives with proven outcome-focused approaches.”

The following elements are key to sustainably financing people-centred justice and bringing game-changing innovations to scale:

1. Setting an inspiring goal of 100% coverage of effective solutions for the most urgent and frequent justice problems.
2. Safeguarding core funding for the broad social goals of the justice system and introducing smart fees: increasing contributions by beneficiaries and government agencies for effective services, whilst decreasing general subsidies.
3. Allowing justice sector organisations to reinvest the extra revenues.
4. Regulatory space for developing well-defined, scalable, financially sustainable services for particular target groups. Courts, other current providers of services, and innovative newcomers should be allowed to develop gamechangers.
5. Attracting private and public investment by ensuring that evidence-based, scalable and financially sustainable services can become the default for particular categories of disputes and crimes. These services should observe value-based regulation.
6. Focusing on local delivery of solutions for the most urgent and frequent justice problems. Supporting local delivery with world-class know-how.
7. Investment (by the World Bank, OECD countries or major foundations) in basic technologies for delivering fair solutions that can be used worldwide.

This report outlines a radical new way of thinking about how to fund justice.

Trend Reports are user-friendly and practice-oriented annual reports that track developments in the justice sector, focusing on access to justice. Their policy recommendations are based on comparative analyses of justice needs data, experiences with innovation, and efforts to bring justice innovation to scale.