Reading the rights: a cautionary tale of comprehension and comprehensibility

Abstract

The UK police caution, delivered to suspects on arrest, has undergone a number of rewrites, most recently in 1995 as a reaction to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994. This paper analyses the role played by police officers when delivering the caution in influencing its comprehensibility, by means of an in situ study of 100 detained persons and 50 police officers. Findings indicate that there is considerable variability in the paraphrases provided by officers, and that some paraphrases may in fact result in the explanation of suspects’ rights being less comprehensible than the caution itself. The paper argues that asking linguistically untrained officers to provide paraphrases which are graded for both language and comprehensibility is unreasonable; finally, the use of standardized paraphrases – along similar lines to pattern jury instructions – is discussed.

“I'm Very Not About the Law Part”: Nonnative Speakers of English and the Miranda Warnings

“…Several studies and case reviews carried out in the United Kingdom (Cotterill, 2000), in the United States (Berk-Seligson, 2000;Brière, 1978;Connell & Valladares, 2001;Einesman, 1999;Roy, 1990;Shuy, 1997Shuy, , 1998Solan & Tiersma, 2005), and in Australia (Eades, 2003;Gibbons, 1990Gibbons, , 1996Gibbons, , 2001Gibbons, , 2003 show that NNSs of English are at a considerable disadvantage when processing police cautions because of the linguistic and conceptual complexity of these texts and their cultural specificity. These difficulties may be further compounded by the use of untrained interpreters, including police officers and family members (Berk-Seligson, 2000, 2002Connell & Valladares, 2001;Einesman, 1999, Nakane, in press;Russell, 2000).…”

"Like giving a wheelchair to someone who should be walking": Interpreter access and the problematisation of linguistic diversity in the justice system

“…While it would be easy to lay blame solely on the police, it is notable that legislative frameworks themselves can actually contribute to an environment where miscarriages of justice can and do arise. Not only do they require police to act as untrained linguists in making assessments about English proficiency (Cooke, 2002;Cotterill, 2000), but they also frame English monolingualism as the default preference for communication. From this perspective, it is unsurprising that interpreters can be underused, particularly if a person appears to speak English at a conversational level (Powell & Bartholomew, 2003).…”

Ordet fanger. Retslingvistik i en dansk kontekst

“…dreje sig om at forsøge at få en sag afvist på grund af procedurefejl (fx i forhold til om en afhørt er blevet korrekt informeret om sine rettigheder; jf. Cotterill 2000og Berk-Seligson 2002, eller om at argumentere for at sprogligt bevismateriale i sagen er misforstået eller forkert udlagt af anklagemyndigheden (fx om tiltalte faktisk accepterede bestikkelse (Shuy 2013), eller om der var tale om en reel tilståelse; jf. Coulthard, Johnson & Wright 2017: 167-168, 185-188;Leonard, Ford & Christensen 2017: 892-894).…”