Choice, Privacy and Publicly Funded Legal Advice at Police Stations

Abstract

Section 58 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 confers on all suspects held in police custody a right to consult a solicitor in private. The free legal advice which suspects arrested for certain minor offences can request is restricted to telephone advice from a call‐centre operated by CDS Direct. It is lawful for the Legal Services Commission to restrict the delivery of legal advice in this way. Empirical research, however, reveals that there are police stations that lack the facilities for suspects to speak by telephone with legal advisers secure in the knowledge that what is said will not be overheard. It is unlawful and incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights to expect suspects to speak by telephone to a legal adviser under such conditions.

Extending and professionalising the role of the appropriate adult

“…Since its creation over 25 years ago, the role of the appropriate adult has received relatively little attention from policymakers and academics. This stands in contrast to the extensive and sustained discussion that has been devoted to other parties who may be present during the detention and questioning of suspects, such as the custody officer (see, for example, McConville et al 1991, Choongh 1997, Mylonaki and Burton 2010, interviewing officers (see, for example, 2010, Kassin 2010, Walsh andBull 2010) and the legal adviser (see, for example, Sanders et al 1989, Brown et al 1992, Pattenden and Skinns 2010, Skinns 2011. This dearth of interest is surprising and of concern because of the vulnerability of juvenile and mentally disordered suspects and the potential impact that an appropriate adult can have on their detention and questioning, and thus on the outcome of any legal case in which they are involved.…”

Interviewing suspects under caution: problems for historical allegations

“…It was also shown that the quality of legal representation at the police station varies widely from very effective to ineffective and worst still adverse representation (McConville and Hodgson, 1993;Pearse and Gudjonsson, 1996;Ede and Shepherd, 2000). More recently, Pattenden and Skinns (2010) noted that the system has changed in that the police no longer put the suspect through to a legal advisor.…”

“…For offences deemed the least serious, a telephone helpline is available called the "Criminal Defence Services Direct". This service is manned by paralegals and in a return to conditions prior to the DSCC, includes former police officers (Pattenden and Skinns, 2010). The term paralegal is a broad label designed to encompass a wide range and levels of qualifications for those assisting in the provision of providing legal support at any level.…”

Privacy dictionary: A new resource for the automated content analysis of privacy

“…We chose eight contexts that are, according to previous research, sensitive to privacy issues: (a) criminal offences and imprisonment (Pattenden & Skinns, 2010), (b) children and the Internet (Livingstone, 2006), (c) financial exclusion (Leyshon, Signoretta, Knights, Alferoff, & Burton, 2006), (d) sexuality (Meerabeau, 2001), (e) sharing in social network sites (Christidi & Rosenbaum‐Elliot, 2010), (f) experiences of elderly people with medical care (Costello, 2001), (g) health experiences within medical practices (DeCew, 2000), and (h) the role of cultural identity in community participation (Petronio, 2002). We visited the U.K. Data Archive (hosted on the Economic and Social Data Service site: http://www.esds.ac.uk), which is a central data bank of previously U.K.‐funded research, or contacted researchers who had worked on these topics to identify preexisting datasets.…”