Inside Police Custody: An Empirical Account of Suspects' Rights in Four Jurisdictions

This empirical study of the procedural rights of suspects in four EU jurisdictions - France, Scotland, the Netherlands and England and Wales - focuses on three of the procedural rights set out in the EU Roadmap for strengthening the procedural rights of suspected or accused persons in criminal proceedings - the right to interpretation and translation; the right to information and the letter of rights; and the right to legal assistance before and during police interrogation. In order to examine how these procedural rights operate in practice, the authors spent between two and five months in eight field sites across the four jurisdictions. During this time they observed lawyers and police officers during the period of police custody; examined case records; observed lawyer-client consultations; and attended suspect interrogations. Furthermore, they conducted 75 interviews with police officers, lawyers and accredited legal representatives. In addition to producing and analysing empirical data, the authors have developed training guidelines for lawyers and police officers involved in the police detention process for use across the EU. The project team also produced a series of recommendations for legislative and policy changes designed to ensure better enforcement of the EU procedural rights' instruments that are envisaged in the Stockholm Programme. The was carried out by the Universities of Maastricht, Warwick and the West of England, together with JUSTICE. Avon and Somerset Police and the Open Society Justice Initiative were also collaborators on the project.

Jodie Blackstock is Director of Criminal and EU Justice Policy at the law reform organisation JUSTICE, and a barrister. Her position involves briefing on proposed domestic and EU legislation in the criminal justice sphere, conducting research into the effectiveness of criminal justice procedures, promoting law reform, and intervening in cases in the public interest. She regularly contributes to seminars and training programmes on criminal and human rights legal developments, in the UK, Europe and internationally.Before joining JUSTICE in January 2009, she practiced from 1 Crown Office Row Chambers. She is also qualified as an attorney-at-law in Trinidad and Tobago, where she has practiced in constitutional and public law matters both in the Caribbean and on appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. She sits on the EU Law Committee of the Bar Council of England and Wales, the executive committee of the Bar Human Rights Committee and is treasurer of the Extradition Lawyers' Association. She is also a member of the Fair Trials International Legal Experts' Panel and contributes on behalf of JUSTICE to the Criminal Justice Alliance and Standing Committee for Youth Justice.Ed Cape is a Professor of Criminal Law and Practice at the University of the West of England, Bristol. A former criminal defence solicitor, he has a special interest in criminal justice, criminal procedure, police powers, defence lawyers and access to justice. He is an internationally known researcher in the field of criminal justice, and is also the author of texts, books and journal articles on a range of themes including the criminal defence profession, the regulation of police powers, police bail, legal aid and access to justice, and EU procedural rights.Jacqueline Hodgson holds an LLB and PhD and has researched and written in the area of UK, French, comparative and European criminal justice. Much of her work draws upon her own empirical projects funded by the ESRC, Nuffield Foundation, British Academy, Leverhume Trust, AHRC, the European Commission and the Home Office. She has contributed to policy reform through her research for the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice and her evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Europe. She has written widely in this area and her expertise has been sought in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, as well as in a number of European Arrest Warrant cases and other extradition cases. She held a British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship for 2009-2010. She was awarded the Social Science Faculty Impact prize in 2013. In 2013 she was elected to the Council of JUSTICE and in 2014 she was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.Anna Ogorodova holds a law degree from Tomsk State University in Russia (2003) and LLM in Human Rights from Central European University in Budapest (2004). In 2004-2009 she worked at the Open Society Justice Initiative, a law reform program of the Open Society Institute (international private foundation). At the Justice Initiative she worked on projects aiming to reform national criminal justice systems, with particular focus on free legal assistance for criminal defendants and pre-trial detention. From 2006 till 2009, Anna has been involved as associate legal officer in Open Society Institute in a project "Promoting Effective Criminal Defence Rights in the European Union", a collaborative effort of several institutions including the Law Faculty of Maastricht University.Since 2010 she is PhD Researcher at the Maastricht University where she works on a dissertation research aimed to empirically examine the position of criminal defence at the investigative stage of criminal proceedings in the Netherlands and in the UK.