Outsider's View

I dropped by the courthouse the other day with an old acquaintance who has reached his ninth decade, but who has never, until this week, seen the inside of a court. He was genuinely shocked - at the people in the waiting room, at the proceedings in the courtroom, and at the very thought of a cell.
Those of us in the trade take the whole thing for granted, but my friend's visit was a useful reminder that the vast majority of the public have, as is proper, no idea of what goes on in their name, and can live to a great age without any experience of being a defendant.