Deborah Cooper
Special Measures for Child Witnesses in the Criminal Courts
Debbie Cooper is working in the fields of criminal justice and criminal evidences. Her research project focuses on the use of special measures to assist child witnesses giving evidence in the criminal courts in England and Wales. Her project involves empirical research and normative analysis of the results. Debbie is conducting her empirical research with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and is using qualitative techniques, primarily semi-structured interviews, to investigate the factors that influence the discretionary decision making processes of the criminal justice professionals who control the use of special measures in the criminal justice system.
She is particularly interested in determining how the implementation of the relevant legislation, Part II of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, is filtered through the work practices of front-line legal professionals, and how the attitudes, beliefs and work practices of those professionals shape its everyday operation. Debbie’s normative work then subjects the legislation on the statute book and the results of her field work to analysis, using a theoretical framework of four different ideal type criminal justice models to determine the criminal justice objectives that the statute and the practice are advancing. Her preliminary findings suggest a complex web of influences that promote differing conceptions of justice. Although Debbie’s findings indicate that the legislation has been successful in constraining those influences and has achieved its primary objective of keeping children out of the courtroom, the fundamental tension between victim-centred and retributive ideals of justice nevertheless persists and remains strong.
Professor Paul Roberts
Self
Academic Qualifications
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Awarding Institutions
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LLB
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University of Nottingham
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Articles
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Debbie Cooper, ‘Pigot Unfulfilled: Video-recorded Cross-Examination under Section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999’ [2005] Crim LR 456.
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Paul Roberts, Debbie Cooper and Sheelagh Judge, ‘Coming Soon to a Court Near You! Special Measures for Vulnerable and Intimidated Witnesses: Part 1’, (2005) 169 Justice of the Peace 748.
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Paul Roberts, Debbie Cooper and Sheelagh Judge, ‘Coming Soon to a Court Near You! Special Measures for Vulnerable and Intimidated Witnesses: Part 2’, (2005) 169 Justice of the Peace 769.
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Paul Roberts, Debbie Cooper and Sheelagh Judge, ‘Monitoring Success, Accounting for Failure: The Outcome of Prosecutors’ Applications for Special Measures Directions under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999’, (2005) 9 E & P 269.
Debbie Cooper and Paul Roberts, Special Measures for Vulnerable and Intimidated Witnesses: An Analysis of Crown Prosecution Service Monitoring Data (CPS, 2005), available on-line via http://www.cps.gov.uk/.
Review of Louise Ellison, The Adversarial Process and the Vulnerable Witness. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) (2003) 7 E & P 71.
Whilst studying for her PhD Debbie has, together with Professor Paul Roberts, worked as a research consultant for the Crown Prosecution Service (see publications above) and has also worked as a part-time tutor-in-law at the University of Nottingham on The Principles of Criminal Evidence course.
Debbie succesfully completed her PhD studies in 2010.