Training of the court observers

For the realization of the second component of the Project “Strengthening Access to Justice for the Poor”, within which the monitoring of the court hearings is envisaged, the training of the twenty selected court observers has taken place on 8-9 December, 2009 in St. Petersburg. The training was opened by the presentation of the Project by the expert Lev Ivanov, who was followed by the explanation of the sociological approach to the court study and its importance for the improvement of the court practices, delivered by V.M. Voronkov.

A team leader L.V. Ezhova presented the sociological toolkit of the monitoring, elaborating on its components and conducting mock interviews. The second day of the monitoring aimed at psychological preparation of the observers, in particular, breaking the psychological barriers in their personal interactions and understanding the psychological characteristics of the respondents. This session has been done by Y.N Nikolaeva, a team leader of the psychological services of the North-West Department of the Russian Justice Academy.