Court interpreters have seldom been featured in studies on the criminal courts. Until recently, cases requiring court interpreters were rare and marginal. The peculiarity and historical rarity of these cases may explain the lack of academic consideration of the work of court interpreters in the criminal justice literature. Rapid demographic changes brought about by mass migration, however, are changing the make-up of criminal justice proceedings, rendering court interpreters key participants and inexorable aides for the everyday running of the criminal justice system. This article examines the increased reliance on interpreters and the nature of their involvement in criminal justice proceedings. It will explore the relationship between interpreters and defendants, on the one hand, and between interpreters, counsels, and judges, on the other. Drawing on empirical data stemming from a research project on foreign national defendants conducted in Birmingham’s criminal courts, we explore issues of trust and reliability underpinning the intervention of court interpreters and the implications of these interventions for the defendant’s case. The use of interpreters aims first and foremost to ensure the defendant’s right to defense. Yet, as we show, their intervention is often propelled or hindered by instrumental, procedural, or logistical reasons, intimately linked to the rapid transformation of the demography of defendants and the privatization of services related to the criminal justice system.

This article explores the availability of discourses of victimhood to political actors who aim to justify violence and mass atrocity in the name of those victims. Arguing that the label of the 'victim' is equally available for distortion and political capitalization as the label of the 'criminal' or the 'terrorist', this article reflects on the role of the victim in violence and processes of criminalization. Examining the rhetorical tendencies and strategies of both the state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the Sri Lankan civil war, this article describes how the victim was categorized by both sides. This article argues that these categorizations, which simultaneously draw on respective collective memories of victimization are crucial to the manner in which the state's purported process of post-war 'reconciliation' is created and politicized and how victims are included in such a process. Interrogating the post-war landscape of militarization and repression in the country's Tamil-dominated Northeast, this article also examines new configurations of Tamil victim discourses and their potential as a tool of political agency.

Post-war Sri Lanka is defined by the logic of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, glorification and expansion of the military, and the exponential growth of state-corporate economic projects. This article examines the performative politics of the state in mass ritual discourse and spatial domination while acknowledging the various ways in which elements of the Northeastern Tamil community in Sri Lanka are mobilising as an activist community in the post-war period, including political agitation and emancipatory initiatives that respond to social justice issues, such as land grabs. Offering an analysis premised on the concept of performative politics, this article interrogates the process by which the state defines itself, while the Tamil community has used performative politics to communicate the unacceptability of the post-war performance of power. A framework of performative politics in post-war Sri Lanka, I argue, introduces a new grammar of politics more responsive to the nationalistic Sinhala-Buddhist settler-colonial tendencies of the state and to the polyvalent nature of Tamil resistance. On the international level, the state performatively complies with international demands for accountability and reconciliation while continuing to oppress the Tamil minority and undertake nationalistic authorship of post-war space.

This series aims to bring together in one series scholars from around the world who are researching the dynamics of post-conflict transformation in societies emerging from communal conflict and collective violence. The series welcomes studies of particular transitional societies emerging from conflict, comparative work that is cross-national, and theoretical and conceptual contributions that focus on some of the key processes in post-conflict transformation. The series is purposely interdisciplinary and addresses the range of issues involved in compromise, reconciliation and societal healing. It focuses on interpersonal and institutional questions, and the connections between them.More information about this series at