Ensuring 'appropriate' protections for young suspects

The book is the result of the first part of the European Commission funded research project 'Protecting young suspects in interrogations: a study on safeguards and best practice'. The legal study underlying this volume consisted of comparative research into existing procedural safeguards for juvenile suspects during interrogation in the legal frameworks of five selected Member States of the European Union: Belgium, England and Wales, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands. In Chapter 3 are presented the comparative # findings in relation to England and Wales

Understanding the sentencing process in France

French sentencing is characterized by broad judicial discretion and an ethos of individualized justice focused on rehabilitation. The aims are to prevent recidivism, and so protect the interests of society, while reintegrating the offender. By contrast, the political Right, characterized by the recent Sarkozy regime, favors deterrence through harsher penalties, minimum prison sentences, increased incarceration, and preventive detention of offenders considered dangerous. The sentencing process can be understood only within the broader context of inquisitorially rooted criminal procedure. The central part played by the prosecutor (including in case disposition through alternative sanctions) and her role in recommending sentences that the court almost invariably endorses, together with the unitary nature of the judicial profession, means that there is remarkable consistency in penalties imposed. The contrainte pénale, based on a reconsideration of the range of available penalties put forward by the Consensus Commission and legislated in 2014, is unlikely to have great impact without investment in the probation service and a change in the judicial culture that still favors simple sentencing options, including imprisonment, compared with alternatives now in place

Research methodology

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Disenfranchisement as punishment : European Court of Human Rights, UK and Canadian responses to prisoner voting

Whether or not prisoners should enjoy the right to vote is a controversial subject in many democracies but perhaps none more so than in the UK. The issue pits the civil and political rights of some of the most unpopular citizens within society against the strong desire of Parliament to restrict and to limit those rights. In this paper, we examine how the UK has for a decade been able to avoid responding to decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), domestic courts, and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), that a complete ban on prisoner voting rights contravenes the First Protocol to the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). Much of the debate has focused on Parliamentary resistance to the rulings, but we argue that the European and domestic courts bear a good deal of responsibility for this state of affairs

The right of access to a lawyer at police stations: Making the European Union directive work in practice

Drawing on recent empirical research, the article examines the necessary conditions for effective implementation of the European Union Directive on the right of access to a lawyer. It discusses the range of complex and often inter-related factors that operate to help or hinder the process of ensuring that the right is 'practical and effective', and identifies the need for changes to the legal and occupational cultures of police, prosecutors and the criminal bar