The Right to Access to a Lawyer at Police Stations: Making the European Union Directive Work in Practice
Recent EU Directives provide for a range of procedural protections for suspects and accused persons, going beyond the more broadly articulated standards set out in the European Convention of Human Rights. These reforms are to be welcomed, but their implementation poses a range of challenges for Member States. Drawing on recent empirical research, this article focuses on one measure, the right to legal assistance during police custody. It discusses the range of complex and often inter-related factors that operate to help or to hinder the process of ensuring that the right is ‘practical and effective’ and not merely ‘theoretical and illusory’. Member States do not share a common procedural tradition and alongside ensuring sufficient financial and human resources, effective implementation will require shifts in the legal and occupational cultures of police, prosecutors and the criminal bar.
SCANning for truth. Scholars’ and practitioners’ perceptions on the use(fulness) of Scientific Content Analysis in detecting deception during police interviews
SCAN (Scientific Content Analysis) is an analytic method that claims to detect deception in written statements. Although the validity of SCAN is contested in literature, various (law enforcement) agencies across the globe are trained in using the technique. To date it remains unknown how the technique is perceived and to what extent it is used in practice. Based on a scoping review and an open- and closed-ended survey, we identified practitioners’ and scholars’ prevailing perceptions on the use(fulness) of SCAN. Data were collected from 48 participants (35 practitioners and 13 scholars). Key findings illuminate a discrepancy between practitioners and academics. While practitioners position themselves positively towards SCAN, academics urge for a complete disappearance of the technique. Practitioners apply an incomplete, personalized version of SCAN. Since SCAN is not applied in its originally designed form and existing research demonstrates the technique has important shortcomings, we advise practitioners to abandon SCAN altogether.
The Role of Democratic Politics in Transforming Moral Convictions into Law
Professor Michael Perry's new book, Morality, Politics, and Law, is an ambitious attempt to address the extent to which moral and religious beliefs in a pluralistic society, such as ours, can legitimately influence law. He departs from the common opinion in legal circles that moral beliefs are a matter of taste or "values," and defends an older conception that it is possible to attain moral "knowledge." ' He also departs from the "liberal political-philosophical project," 2 which claims that it is possible (and desirable) for governments to steer a neutral course between competing moral understandings of the good. This, he suggests, is an illusion, and a disguise for the imposition of a particular moral structure without opportunity for open deliberation and reflection. Professor Perry brings some refreshing common sense to these riddles of moral philosophy. His "naturalist" approach has obvious roots in Aristotle-not a bad place to begin thinking about ethics. His dismissal of