COVID-19 lockdowns and children's access to justice: An interrupted time series analysis of Moroccan court filings

Abstract

Morocco's national lockdown was enforced between March 21st and June 10th 2020 in response to the spread of coronavirus. Restriction of civil space was not fully extended to the judiciary which had to transition to virtual sessions. To prepare for future pandemics and disasters, it is crucial to understand how well court systems across jurisdictions especially in low- and middle-income countries managed to function and protect children's access to justice under the constraints of stay-at-home orders. To investigate the effect of the national lockdown on children's access to justice in Morocco, this study employed interrupted time series analysis of publicly available court filings (N = 77,335) pertaining to child protection from January 1st to December 31st 2020 spanning the pre-lockdown, lockdown, and post-lockdown periods. Results showed that lockdown measures hampered children's access to justice and is associated with statistically significant and substantial deceases in the number of cases heard by the courts across all filing types. The interrupted time series model estimates that average cases per week dropped by 199.5 for penal filings, 1180.3 for civil filings, 942.5 for complaint filings, and 358.1 for report fillings during the lockdown relative to the pre-lockdown period. While the percentage of cases with recorded delays mostly increased, the average case length decreased except for civil filings which saw a significant increase. The substantial susceptibility of civil cases to lockdowns might be precipitated by the need of individuals to petition the court for a hearing. Evidence suggests that the courts adjudicating child protection cases struggled to maintain operations during the national lockdown, and indicates the need for stronger disaster preparedness and an integrated child protection system to increase the judiciaries' resilience and children's access to justice in future emergency and disaster events.