‘Empathy pouring out of your bones’: emotions and emotional labour in courts – the case of young magistrates in England and Wales

This article explores the experiences of young (under 40 years old) magistrates in England and Wales, a perennially under-represented group in the criminal justice system. Drawing on 23 interviews with currently serving young magistrates, the article examines the use of emotions and emotional labour by this group of criminal justice actors, specifically the ways in which emotion constructively informs judicial decision-making, and how emotional management is used to achieve procedural justice in magistrates’ courts. Data also show that young magistrates, as a minority group in this context, enact emotional labour practices to navigate through their experiences which include instances of soft discrimination and an absence of peer support. The article’s findings make new contributions to the growing corpus of literature on emotion and criminal justice as well as advancing understandings of emotional labour, specifically the intersection of this concept with age, volunteerism and discrimination.