This Master's thesis examines the emotional labour carried out by legal professionals in the criminal justice system. Emotional labour is a sociological concept that draws attention to the ways in which people manage and express their emotions in order to achieve the goals of the
organisation in which they work. The concept has received academic attention primarily because of its potential negative social and psychological consequences for those who carry out this type of work. This Master's thesis deals with the complexity of this concept, together with its dimensions and its inherent problems such as gender inequality and negative consequences, and explains why it is reasonable and necessary to explore emotional labour in criminal justice. This field, like the legal profession in general, is characterised by the reign of rationality and reason and the emphasis on the notion of impartiality, while (lawyers')
emotions are mostly negatively valued, which helps us to understand why there is a lack of empirical research in this field.
The empirical part of the thesis represents one of the pioneering studies of emotional labour among legal professionals in Slovenia. In this part, the author presents her findings based on an extensive qualitative analysis of semi-structured in-depth interviews with criminal justice
judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers. This section details some key aspects of emotional labour in criminal justice, which provides a basis for possible further research.
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