A Fair Trial

In most developed countries around the world, one of the greatest human rights is access to a free trial with a jury of your pairs, but as it turns out there really is no such thing as a ‘free’ trial.

As this world becomes more culturally diverse and languages and cultures begin to live side by side the chance for miscommunication becomes much greater, but one place this simply isn’t acceptable is in the legal system.

Because the figures aren’t as readily available for the US I will refer to current trends in the UK to show the impact the cultural diversity is having on the legal system.

In 2006 the UK National Police spent £13.5million on translation and interpretation services, but by the end of 2008, that figure was £22million per year, that is nearly twice as much spent on the same service in a four year period. The 2009 figures show that the London Metropolitan Police alone have spent £10.6million on translation. But this is just the Police, how many of these cases make it to the courtrooms where this process begins all over again. A police interpreter may spend a day with an offender, where as the court system has this same offender for a week, or even more.

If the spend on police translation has doubled in the last four years, does that also suggest that the number of non-English speaking immigrants has double?  That simply isn’t possible, so there must be a better explanation for this massive increase, and the simple answer is human rights.

When you have ridiculous cases like that of Amy Winehouse’s 1997 drug-possession arrest in Norway, where her attorney argued that because the fluent English speaking police officer was not a qualified interpreter she did not receive fair counsel. There is any wonder the legal system is getting tough on getting interpretation right.

If that extra £9.5million spent on translation has put even one dangerous criminal behind bars, then it is money well spent.