How do ordinary people experience and make sense of the informal justice system?  Drawing on original data with British and German users of Ombudsmen- an important institution of informal justice, Naomi Creutzfeldt offers a nuanced comparative answer to this question. In so doing, she takes current debates on procedural justice and legal consciousness forward. This book explores consciousness around 'alternatives' to formal legality and asks how situated assumptions about law and fairness guide people's understandings of the informal justice system. Creutzfeldt shows that the everyday relationship that people have with the informal justice system is shaped by their experiences and expectations of the formal legal system and its agents. This book is an innovative theoretical and empirical statement about the future prospects for informal justice in Europe.

PART ONE: SETTING THE SCENE

Chapter 1. Ombudsmen and informal justice
Chapter 2. Europe's Informal justice systems
Chapter 3. Models of ombudsmen
Chapter 4. Procedural justice and legal consciousness: questions of theory and practise
PART TWO: EMPIRICAL DISCOVERIES
Chapter 5. Expectations and perceptions of Ombudsmen in cross-national comparison
Chapter 6. Everyday assumptions about ombudsmen
PART THREE: THE FUTURE OF INFORMAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS
Chapter 7. A European informal justice system?
Chapter 8. Growing informal justice (from the inside-out)
Chapter 9. Paths for theory and research.