In the preceding chapter we considered some of the respects in which court proceedings can be seen as a form of theatre. To continue with this theme: one might assume that within the theatre of the courtroom, victims, witnesses and defendants are the main players. In practice, however, these individuals play only minor, walk-on parts in proceedings, while the starring roles are played by the legal professionals – the judge and, particularly, the prosecution and defence counsel. Other professionals, such as the police, court staff and expert witnesses, often play supporting roles.

Victims and witnesses at court take centre stage only for the (usually relatively short) period of time when they give evidence in a trial. Even at this point, they are seldom granted the freedom to tell their story in full, in the manner they wish. This apparent marginalisation of victims within the court setting has been well-documented (see for example, Rock, 1993; Fielding, 2006; Doak, 2008; Shapland and Hall, 2010) and victims themselves often complain that their voices are silenced while defendants are placed at the heart of the court process. However, for their part, defendants often adopt an entirely passive role; they are the ‘ever-present extras’ in proceedings.

The clearest divide in the courtroom, therefore, is not between victim and defendant, or prosecution and defence, as might be expected; but between the legal professionals and the lay court users. Jurors, however, straddle this divide: on the one hand, they are members of the public, have no professional expertise, and are deliberately excluded from aspects of what goes on in court; on the other hand, in a trial, the responsibility for determining guilt lies with them alone.

The focus of this chapter is the ‘them and us’ relationship between the court users (victims, witnesses and defendants) and the legal professionals (judge and counsel). Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which court users are treated as ‘them’ by professionals at court. Court users are lay people, mere members of the public, who occupy an ‘outsider’ (Rock, 1993) or marginalised sphere. There is, undoubtedly, a need based on legal and security imperatives to keep a physical and metaphorical distance between ‘them’ and the closeted sphere of ‘us’ occupied by the various professionals.