Most people will never set foot inside a courthouse unless something has gone very wrong in their lives. Maybe they’re leaving an abusive partner. Maybe they’re fighting for custody of their children. Maybe they’re the one accused of a crime, terrified and confused, unsure what’s going to happen to them. Whatever brought them there, they are almost certainly in one of the most stressful situations of their lives.
Now imagine that when they arrive, they can’t find the courtroom. The signs are unclear or only in English. There’s nowhere private to sit and collect themselves, often just a row of hard wooden or metal benches in a hallway where they might run directly into the person they’re most afraid of. There’s no drinking water. The lighting flickers. The temperature is so cold they haven’t taken off their coat. And no one seems to be around to help.
This isn’t a hypothetical. It’s the documented reality of courthouse access across British Columbia, as catalogued in a sweeping new report by Rise Women’s Legal Centre.
What the report found
Rise assessed 73 of BC’s 84 court locations over nearly a year, measuring them against a set of safety and accessibility criteria. The numbers are striking.
| 67% | had only one entrance and exit |
| 99% | had just one document pickup window |
| 96% | lacked info about bringing a support person |
| 78% | had washrooms not meeting accessibility code |
| 100% | offered no child care of any kind |
| 46% | had no private waiting space |
These aren’t abstract policy failures. Each one of these figures represents a real barrier. The represent a moment where a person who is already vulnerable is forced to navigate an institution that, by its physical design, makes their day harder and potentially less safe.
This isn’t just about criminal court
It’s easy to think of court access as primarily a criminal justice issue with defendants and witnesses passing through on their way to a verdict. But the courthouse is also where families dissolve, where custody is decided, where protection orders are sought and enforced, and where civil disputes get resolved. A survivor of intimate partner violence may never testify in a criminal trial and yet find themselves at the courthouse repeatedly: applying for a protection order, attending family court hearings, filing documents related to their separation.
The report is rightly focused on survivors in this context. When someone is fleeing an abusive relationship, the courthouse is often one of the first institutions they have to physically enter while their abuser may be present in the same building. The three points of forced contact identified in the report are entering and exiting the building, entering and exiting the courtroom, and picking up documents from the registry. Each of these are exactly the moments where a single-entrance building, a single registry window, and the absence of a private waiting room stop being inconveniences and start being genuine safety risks.
“The court location was overall uncomfortable and I would be terrified to have to appear here facing an abuser.”
— Court support worker in a northern community, quoted in the report
For a survivor who has spent months or years managing the threat posed by an abusive partner, being forced to wait in the same hallway, use the same single door, and stand in the same document queue is not just distressing. It can be retraumatizing in a way that genuinely impairs their ability to participate in their own legal matter. The law gives them rights. The building takes some of those rights back.
The accused person’s experience matters too
As a defence lawyer, I want to be direct about something the conversation around courthouse safety sometimes overlooks: the people I represent, those accused of crimes, are navigating these same broken spaces, and the impact on them is severe.
An accused person coming to court is often dealing with their own forms of trauma. They may be experiencing acute anxiety, mental health crises, addiction, poverty, and in many cases, their own history of victimization. The criminal justice system is adversarial and bewildering to most people who encounter it. Being accused of a serious offence is one of the most frightening experiences a person can have, regardless of guilt or innocence.
The same features that fail survivors fail accused persons. The flickering lights and cold hallways. The confusing signage. The absence of anyone who can answer a basic question. The hard bench in a public corridor where a person is supposed to quietly prepare for a proceeding that may determine the course of the rest of their life. Many of my clients have no lawyer with them — they come alone, already overwhelmed, and the building offers nothing to ease that. The report found that 20% of locations had no one readily available to answer questions, and in 42% of locations, the sheriffs were hard to find. For someone who needs to know where to go, what to do next, or simply whether they’re in the right place, these are not small details.
| What the research noted Community-based court locations such as those held in community centres, First Nations gathering spaces, and Service BC buildings consistently outperformed traditional courthouses on safety and accessibility metrics. They tended to have warmer environments, more accessible facilities, and more staff available to help. The researchers flagged this as a model worth studying further. |
Stress degrades decision-making and communication. A client who has been sitting in an intimidating, confusing building for hours before their matter is called is not in the best position to instruct me, to follow the proceedings, or to present themselves coherently before a judge. The physical environment of the courthouse is not separate from the quality of justice delivered inside it. They are connected.
The systemic picture
What the Rise report makes clear is that these aren’t isolated problems at a handful of aging buildings; they are patterns found across most of BC’s 73 assessed court locations. Only 13% had artwork or plants to soften interior spaces. Only half of courthouse libraries were easy to find. Half of all locations lacked accessible cold drinking water for people waiting, sometimes for hours.
The researchers are careful to note that the solution isn’t to rebuild every courthouse. That isn’t realistic, and it wouldn’t address the underlying issue quickly enough. Instead, they propose seven practical interventions like better signage, a court concierge role, private waiting areas, reliable paging systems, print resources in multiple languages, and basic provisions like drinking water and snacks, all that could be tested and implemented without structural construction.
These are not expensive suggestions. They are, in many cases, the basic dignities we expect from any public institution: a hospital, a library, a government service centre. The fact that our courthouses routinely fall short of those standards is not a product of neglect at any single location. It is a systemic failure that has accumulated over time and now requires a systemic response.
Why this should matter to all of us
The courthouse is a place where the state exercises some of its most consequential power over individuals. It is where families are reorganized, where freedom is won or lost, and where survivors seek the protection of the law. If we believe that access to justice is a meaningful concept and not just a slogan, then the physical experience of the courthouse cannot be an afterthought.
For survivors of intimate partner violence who are navigating family law, for parents fighting for their children, for accused persons facing criminal charges, and for the growing number of people who attend court without a lawyer… all of them deserve a space that is navigable, accessible, and at least minimally supportive of their ability to participate in their own legal matters.
This report is the first province-wide assessment of its kind in BC. It is a careful, data-driven document produced by researchers who care deeply about what they found. The government helped fund it. Now comes the harder part: using it.
Based on Access, Safety, and Regional Context: A Comprehensive Assessment of BC Court Locations, by Samantha Davis and Stephanie Melnyk, Rise Women’s Legal Centre (March 2026). The report was funded by the BC Ministry of Attorney General.
