Going to court can be a dreary and unnerving experience – even for those not accused of having committed a crime. Most courts are housed in dilapidated buildings which contain no amenities to make the public’s stay a comfortable one. Two innovations have the potential to significantly improving the services the public can expect to find at larger court centres in the country, while simultaneously saving the state money. One such innovation is to appoint private sector court managers to develop income-generating court-based services to improve the public’s experience of going to court. Another, more radical, innovation is to privatise selected court buildings and convert them into profit generating multi-purpose retail nodes.

Poor service

Courts should provide a variety of services to the public. Criminal courts adjudicate on the guilt or innocence of accused persons, civil courts adjudge disputes between litigants. Courthouses also provide the venue where people get married, fines are paid, and child-support disputes settled. In effect, the court-going public are the clients of the courts and the state employees who work there. it is also the public’s tax money which pays for the courts and public servants working within them.

The court system relies on the public for its effective operation. Courts would stop functioning without witnesses willing to testify in court proceedings or offenders paying their fines. Yet, anyone who has had the misfortune of going to court to testify as a witness or seek a reduction in a traffic fine will know what an inhospitable place a courthouse can be. Court centres (i.e. larger magistrates’ courts in the country’s urban centres which contain a number of individual courts under one roof) are neither designed nor managed with a view to making them places which are safe and convenient for the public.

Private sector court managers

To improve the public environment of court centres and the quality of the service delivered by the courts to the public, private sector ‘court managers’ should be appointed. The position of court manager already exists in some large centres in the country. However, presently the primary task of court managers is to streamline the working relationships between magistrates, prosecutors and administrative employees that work in a court building – not to improve the court environment for the public. Moreover, court managers are public servants and are appointed within the restrictive conditions under which state employees are hired.

Private sector court managers should have the mandate to offset some of the costs of operating a court centre, by generating an income for the centre they are responsible for. This could be done through an incentive scheme whereby managers receive a bonus calculated on the income they are able to generate (which would be difficult to do in terms of the strict rules governing public sector managers).

Examples of income-generating initiatives, for which a present need exists at most court centres in the country, include:

• Leasing out space of a court centre to catering companies (to open canteens and refreshment stations), banks (to install Automatic Teller Machines) and other small traders (to sell snacks, reading materials and phone cards, and provide photocopying, Internet-access and other basic office facilities for lawyers and witnesses who need to do some work while waiting for their court cases to begin).
• Renting out court rooms after hours to night schools and other training organisations in need of lecture rooms during evenings or over weekends.
• Renting out wall space outside of court rooms for advertisers. Restrictions could be placed on the type of advertisements that would be allowed excluding, for example, political and other controversial advertising. Non-governmental organisations and foreign donor organisations could be approached to rent space for public-interest advertisement to publicise, for example, public health, anti-crime or road safety campaigns.

Privatising court infrastructure

A more radical proposition may be to privatise some of the larger court centres in the country. This would mean that the state would sell selected court buildings to private sector buyers, who would seek to use them on a profitable basis.

Selling existing infrastructure such as courthouses would generate revenue for the state. This could be used to purchase resources for the criminal justice system, such as new police vehicles or information technology equipment, or it could be invested to generate a continuous income for the state.

The private company purchasing a court centre, would rent it to the state for the latter’s use. Court centres could then be given a multi-purpose function. For example, attached to a court centre could be a bank’s automatic teller machine (ATM), pension payout points, and water and electricity pay points. This would provide a benefit to both the provider of the services and the consumer. An ATM connected to a courthouse is less likely to be stolen or vandalised, while the user of the service will be better protected outside, or even inside a court building, as larger court centres are guarded on a 24-hour basis.

The idea is not limited to financial services. Newspapers, groceries and other goods required on a daily basis, could be sold at a venue connected to a court centre. Other services such as doctors’ rooms, and attorneys’ offices could be attached as well. Eventually larger court centres could form the hub of a retail node for the area in which they are situated.

The providers of the services, such as banks, newspaper sellers, Eskom and the post office, would pay a fee or rent to be able to operate in, or on the property of, a court centre. The income generated from these ancillary non-court services could be used to subsidise the court centre. This private sector subsidisation would allow the private operator to rent the court centre to the state at a low cost.

Martin Schoenteich
Martin Schoenteich was formerly a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. He now works for the Open Society Foundation in New York. He writes in his personal capacity.