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Our mission

Our Mission is to increase the quality of justice environments by working closely with court communities to improve the physical and psychological setting of courts and tribunals, the use of justice technologies, and the processes and rituals of justice.

Our objectives

We aim to:

  • Encourage good design in the building of courts and tribunals – designs that reflect dignity, accessibility, beauty and efficiency
  • Provide opportunities for jurisdictions to learn from each other and build up a body of collective wisdom within our areas of interest
  • Identify best international models in court design and practice, and arranging opportunities to visit and examine these approaches
  • Provide thoughtful analyses of current justice policies in areas such as security, access, and fairness – with a particular focus on the spatial aspects of these policies
  • Test out proposed innovations in justice practices within experimental settings, supporting orderly implementation of change.

Who we are

We are a multidisciplinary group of architects, engineers, psychologists, judicial officers, lawyers, criminologists and others in Australia and New Zealand.

What we do

The Court of the Future Network:

  • Organises conferences and tours to explore issues and encourage the sharing of ideas
  • Carries out research projects and
  • Disseminates guidelines for best practice.

Our history

The Court of the Future Network was set up in 2001 to bring together courts and justice agencies in Australia and New Zealand with architects and academics interested in exploring best practices for court design, judicial rituals and justice technologies.  Our time horizon is 10 to 20 years in the future.

Inspiration for the network came from Antoine Garapon, secretary-general of the French Judicial Research Institute, the Institut des hautes etudes sur la justice, a body with which the Network retains a strong ongoing relationship.


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