Governments ditch police interview recording plans

By David Cronin

Date: 08/09/05

Plans to make the electronic recording of police interrogations compulsory across the EU have been shelved because of firm opposition from many governments.

United Kingdom, the current holder of the Union's presidency, has been advocating that mandatory taping of police interviews be included in EU-wide procedural safeguards for suspects in criminal proceedings.

But Douglas Alexander, the UK Europe minister, has concluded that it is not possible to take this step "given the strength of opposition" from other EU countries.

The UK is the only member state to have systematic recording of interrogations, introduced this in the 1980s after concern about forced confessions.

Alexander said that the UK had outlined the benefits deriving from taping to other member states and had argued "strenuously in favour of it on more than one occasion".

The European Parliament also called for mandatory recording last year. Dutch Green MEP Kathalijne Buitenweg, the assembly's rapporteur on the procedural safeguards dossier, expressed frustration that the Netherlands is among the countries to have rejected the idea, in this case for cost reasons.

Buitenweg said that mandatory taping would often bring benefits to police, as well as to suspects, as it would protect the former against false accusations of ill-treating detainees.

Alexander's comments were contained in a letter to the organisation Fair Trials Abroad.

Stephen Jakobi, the group's director, said it was "quite shameful" that recordings were not required in cases where people arrested had a different mother tongue from their interrogators. "Mechanical recording ensures that an accurate and true version of what actually took place during interrogation is available for experts at a later stage in any proceedings and is therefore essential for the protection of foreign suspects," he added.

Under The Hague Programme on justice and home affairs, member states need to find agreement on procedural safeguards by the end of this year. But Alexander said that "the differences in criminal justice systems make this a complex area to negotiate and there is much work yet to be done to secure unanimous agreement on the text".

The Commission recommended that procedural safeguards were needed to ensure mutual trust between justice systems, especially now that the European arrest warrant has accelerated extradition proceedings. Its proposal covered such questions as access to legal representation both before and during a trial, access to interpretation for non-native defendants and steps for notifying suspects of their rights.

• Justice and interior ministers are to discuss a plan for mandatory retention of data on emails, faxes and phone-calls at a meeting in Newcastle this week (8-9 September). Despite fears by industry that the scheme would prove prohibitive, Charles Clarke, the UK home secretary, said that Britain had devised a system for storing "essential data" for up to a year at the cost of EUR 1.2 million. "Compared to the average costs of a forensic work on a single murder case of over EUR 0.5m, that is an acceptable cost to bear," Clarke said.

Article reports that plans advocated by the UK Presidency of the Council to make the electronic recording of police interrogations compulsory across the EU have been shelved because of firm opposition from many governments.

European Commission: DG Justice, Freedom and Security: Criminal Justice: Defence Rights http://ec.europa.eu/comm/justice_home/fsj/criminal/procedural/fsj_criminal_procedural_en.htm

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