Injustice thrives in the dark, and too many courtrooms are dim, if not pitch black, when it comes to a truly accessible public record. Sunlight is an excellent disinfectant. Official recordings are often patchy, expensive, or a pain to get. Stuff happens – bad rulings, lawyerly fumbles, systemic bias
– that never gets a proper airing because no one's really watching, or the watching isn't being properly archived and analyzed.
This charity would dive headfirst into these murky waters. Resources would be deployed to systematically record public proceedings – everything from motions and hearings to full trials, particularly where accessible records are currently a joke or non-existent. It wouldn't just hoard this data; it would build a vast, open, and searchable archive, a digital witness stand for the public. The real teeth come from using this data to meticulously track and expose judicial or legal missteps, build undeniable cases of systemic bias or incompetence, and arm reformers with hard statistical evidence to hold the entire system accountable.
Video, audio, and transcripts would be meticulously collected and funneled an archive. There they wouldn't just sit gathering digital dust; they'd be indexed, cross-referenced, and made searchable to an almost forensic degree, allowing patterns of questionable judicial temperament, prosecutorial overreach, or inadequate defense to be surfaced and scrutinized. This raw material becomes the irrefutable evidence, the bedrock for statistical analysis identifying systemic rot and the fuel for holding specific actors within the justice system accountable when they stray.
Making it happen may require a branch of the charity focused on lobbying (ick) for reforms to laws that forbid recording in courtrooms. A lot of these guys prefer to live in the dark. Getting consistent, widespread access will be like herding feral jurists with a $50 paycheck. One may also hope no one starts to perform for the cameras. Judges hamming it up going for district attorney won't make for the best outcome. Finally, "trial by Youtube" could become more of a problem as recordings court records are sliced and diced for outrage clicks.