This article addresses a little discussed yet fundamentally important aspect of legal technological transformation: the rise of digital justice in the courtroom. Against the backdrop of the government's current programme of digital court modernisation in England and Wales, it examines the implications of advances in courtroom technology for fair and equitable public participation, and access to justice. The article contends that legal reforms have omitted any detailed consideration of the type and quality of citizen participation in newly digitised court processes which have fundamental implications for the legitimacy and substantive outcomes of court-based processes; and for enhancing democratic procedure through improved access to justice. It is argued that although digital court tools and systems offer great promise for enhancing efficiency, participation and accessibility, they simultaneously have the potential to amplify the scope for injustice, and to attenuate central principles of the legal system, including somewhat paradoxically, access to justice. * Professor of Criminology, College of Law and Criminology, Swansea University. Sincere thanks are due to Nicola Padfield, John Martyn Chamberlain and the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on an earlier draft of this article. 1

This article considers the development and use of the law regulating the prosecution of parents under section 444 of the Education Act 1996, in the broader context of legislation and policy initiatives concerned with the governance of parental responsibility. It explores the ways in which the power to prosecute parents has been used by local educational authorities (LEAs) and interpreted by the courts. The article critically analyses the manner in which the powers emphasise punishment and retribution in the context of the social moralisation of ‘flawed’ parents; pay insufficient regard to the effects of parental responsibility laws on low‐income, single parent families; represent an attempt to impose a simple solution on to a complex socio‐economic problem; and amplify the scope for mothers to be made the subject of criminal justice interventions. It is argued that the prosecution of parents imposes an unfair burden on mothers and, in particular, single parent mothers.

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This article proposes a (re)consideration of antisocial behaviour control informed by an analysis of the seminal work of sociologists of 'reflexive modernity' (Beck, 1992(Beck, , 1994Giddens, 1990Giddens, , 1991Lash, 1994). It is hoped that the arguments advanced within this article will prompt further consideration of the following questions:What does the relative neglect of the reflexive modernity thesis tell us about the domain conjecture(s) of sociological theory on antisocial behaviour policy and the use of ASBOs? And can a focus upon reflexive modernity theory help to construct a more proportionate account of ASBOs as a form of social control? Hence, it is the purpose of this article to consider critically the implications of Beck's 'risk society' to our understandings and explanations of antisocial behaviour, ASBOs and social control, by linking the late modern (re)formatting of antisocial behaviour(s) and the creation of ASBOs to the new parameters of the 'risk society'.