of the placement in custody. In other words, depending upon its time of signature, the police custody register is more or less easily verifiable46. The reality of the time of signature is difficult to establish since in this respect the claims of persons in custody and of OPJs need to be in agreement, which is not always the case. For this reason certainty is only reported in eleven cases out of fifteen in the sample. In the four remaining cases, it is established that signatures were taken prematurely (at the beginning of the placement in police custody) in three police stations. When it can be identified, the time of signature is therefore in most cases problematic. The procedure for questioning has to conform to strict rules of confidentiality. Article 11 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that: “The procedure in the course of the investigation… is secret”. For this reason it is preferable for questioning to take place on a oneto-one basis. This is not the case when there is another OPJ in the room in which the questioning takes place. Not only is this “third party” senior law enforcement officer able to hear the exchanges, a point which is open to criticism while not being too problematic, since compliance with confidentiality is incumbent upon them (“any person involved in the procedure is bound by professional secrecy”); but, in case of busy periods, they may have another person in police custody with them, involved in another case. Many OPJs make every effort to avoid situations of this kind (leeway with times of questioning), but this is not always possible. An effort has been made to list the scenarios in which, due to insufficient availability of offices in the police station, the risk of “unintentional presence of third parties” could arise. The answer is devoid of any ambiguity: with the exception of two police stations which only have one OPJ per office, and another for which the data is unclear, all of the others have at least two OPJs in each office where questioning takes place, and sometimes three. The material conditions for strict respect, that is to say effective respect47 of the secrecy of investigations are therefore not taken care of in most police stations. Finally, the existence of an officer, that is to say the head of a managerial corps, expressly entrusted by the head of the police district with ensuring the proper execution of placements in police custody, is likely to consolidate the effectiveness of the rights attached to the latter. Of course, it is also necessary for these officers to fulfil their role. Since they are often in charge of other demanding duties (head of local security unit for example), this is not always the case. Their existence is at least the sign of a will to establish internal controls in this respect. The circumstance that in four police stations out of fifteen it was not possible to determine whether an officer had been appointed head of police custody indeed appears to indicate that, in certain cases, the activity of this head is not notable by its visibility in the day-today handling of persons in police custody. On the other hand, in nine other cases, such an officer exists and is identifiable by means of the orders given and checks carried out. Although it was not possible to establish any correlation (in the absence of comparison over time) with the handling of persons in police custody, it may be hoped that the existence of this officer has been, as was the intention of the initiators of the directive of 2003, a factor of improvement. It should nevertheless be pointed out that, several years later, two of the fifteen police stations in the 46 It is indeed true that apart from the register, consultation of the police reports, and the official record of the end of police custody in particular, enable identical verification. However, on the one hand, the police reports themselves need to be exemplary, which is generally the case, but there are exceptions; on the other hand, the Code of Criminal Procedure in no way postulates that completion of the register is unnecessary due to the existence of police reports, quite the reverse. 47 It goes without saying that compliance with confidentiality on the part of a third party – in this instance a person in police custody listening to the questioning of another person in police custody – is far more uncertain than on the part of a professional. 44