Injustice by design: A chronotopic analysis of homelessness and the hybrid court system

After a century of inertia, Canadian courtrooms have undergone rapid transformation for the past 6 years. The move toward digital and hybrid proceedings has exposed the deep spatial and temporal structures on which courts rely, while also reshaping how participants access justice. For people experiencing homelessness, long-standing challenges navigating the court system have intensified during this period of technological change. We argue that while modernization efforts and workarounds offered by outreach workers can temporarily mitigbut ate some obstacles, they do not fundamentally alter the conditions that render the court system inaccessible to unhoused people. Drawing on interviews with 18 professionals who assist unhoused people through the court process, we use a chronotopic analysis to examine how court and street spacetime intersect in court proceedings, shaping legal participation. We show how spatio-temporal exclusions persist, and are in some cases reproduced, within hybrid court settings.