Frustrations of Being a Magistrate: Episode 2: Telephone Interpreters

It is crucially important that every defendant appearing before the court understands exactly what is going on.

Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights mandates: "(3) everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights - (e) to have the free assistance of an interpreter if he cannot understand or speak the language used in court."

To that end an interpreter is made freely available to any defendant who does not understand English sufficiently well to be able to follow proceedings.

In my area it is the responsibility of the police, in liaison with the Crown Prosecution Service, to book an interpreter if required for the initial hearing of any defendant they have charged. It is the police's responsibility to book an interpreter if required for any defendant arrested, held in police custody and produced before the court.

Frustrations arise when the police neglect to book an interpreter as they should do, which happens far more frequently than you might imagine. In those circumstances the court will still want to make progress if at all possible, so will often use the fallback option of a telephone interpretation service.

A company called thebigword Group Ltd is contracted to provide face-to-face, telephone and video-remote interpreting services for spoken languages, as well as translation and transcription services, to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) and Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS).

Telephone interpretation is a useful tool at the disposal of the court. Had it been used by Colchester Magistrates last month, there is the chance the authorities would now know the whereabouts of a potentially dangerous alleged sex offender.

In theory there is an army of talented foreign linguists available whenever the court needs to call upon their expertise. In practice antiquated court telephone systems often make using an interpreter very challenging indeed. It must be stressed that the actual telephone interpreting service works well most of the time, although it is obviously not as efficient as having an interpreter present in court. It's the technology at the user-end that seems to cause the biggest problems.

There are often scenes reminiscent of Dom Joly's Trigger Happy TV, with Presiding Justices and advocates shouting at the telephone in an effort to be heard. Defendants in custody have to press their ears hard against the glass of the dock to hear the interpreter. For those not in custody, there is sometimes no other option than to let them lean over the legal advisor's desk to speak into the telephone. I have seen ushers running backwards and forwards, passing the telephone to whoever needs to speak or listen next.

Ideally some sort of system is needed where the telephone system can be easily hooked up to external microphones and speakers. I'm sure such a system wouldn't be that expensive and would serve to increase the efficiency of the court's dealings with non-English speaking defendants.