Oral notification which is rapid, but often incomplete, thereby reducing its scope When notification takes place at the gendarmerie or police station, it is given orally, by the senior-law enforcement officer (OPJ) who took the placement decision, and either occurs in security area premises – which are often noisy and little suitable – or in the OPJ’s office, while the latter enters the person’s identity information into a computerised procedure form; sometimes the operation consists of getting the person to read the formal notification. In any case, this notification gives rise to the signature of the official record, which is written with the assistance of a software application for the drafting of police reports and is formally in compliance with legal requirements in most cases. This software is described as being cumbersome to use by numerous officers encountered. It is designed to provide for the majority of scenarios and obliges OPJs to fill in each section before going on to the next, which renders adaptation to individual situations difficult. At the time of the inspection of a gendarmerie in the Paris region, it also became apparent to the inspectors that certain notes were not always deleted, while others appeared twice, adding to the overall confusion. An examination of the official records of notification of rights shows that this operation sometimes takes less than five minutes. In fact, it was observed that notification of placement in police custody and of ri ghts is regularly carried out in a rapid, incomplete manner, which is not very accessible to the person concerned, and that the official record is not always reread by the person concerned. Difficulties of interpretation 241 When persons placed in police custody do not understand French, OPJs have to hand a form over to them, containing the notification of rights written in a language that they understand. This formality which, in itself, does not guarantee that the person has properly understood their rights, is followed by notification by an interpreter. In practice, interpreters are often reluctant to come because of the long period required for payment of their services. For this reason they often therefore work by telephone, in particular for languages considered rare, another circumstance which is not conducive to guaranteeing proper understanding of rights. The inspectors also ascertained that OPJs sometimes resort to “local networks”, ranging from local shopkeepers to “a colleague’s wife”: it is not certain, in the latter scenario, that the taking of an oath is sufficient to guarantee the interpreter’s professionalism and impartiality. Furthermore, understanding of the language can be difficult to assess. OPJs sometimes prefer to demand interpreters as a matter of course, in order to avoid difficulties for judges in understanding persons brought before them and consequent criticism of the investigators for not having made use of them. Nevertheless, the inspectors have also had occasion to read the following in an official record of notification of rights: “We notify him in the French language, which he understands a little…” Nevertheless, the intervention of an interpreter has the merit of enabling captives to ask questions that they might not venture to ask representatives of authority and to receive more detailed answers. 241 On this point, for foreign detainees, see section 1 of this report. 154