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3.6. The United Kingdom


Since the United Kingdom shares many of Australia's problems with complex
trials, and has attempted to address those problems through PACE and the
Serious Fraud Office, it should be of particular relevance to consider what
has been done there in relation to the use of information technology. The
Roskill Report (Roskill (1986)) was written a long time ago in terms of
information technology. While it recommends that judges should have power to
direct the use of overhead projectors for presentation of evidence (at 9.25),
it makes no significant recommendations about the use of computers in court,
merely that an experiment in one court room would be desirable to test the
potential benefits of using computers to display information (at 9.25).
Roskill also recommends that trial judges should be empowered to 'make orders
and give directions for the preparation and use of visual aids at the trial'
(at 6.66).

The Home Office did conduct some experiments in 1988 (Waugh (1991)), but the
principal initiatives in the United Kingdom arose from 'non-government'
sources. The UK Society for Computers and the Law's Court Procedure Working
Party produced a report which led to the successful installation of a
courtroom network in the Official Receiver's Court: Purnell (1990).

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