Inside Police Custody 2 Moreover, even in those countries where laws or regulations provide for written records to be made of certain procedures, the research shows that these are often completed in a formalistic or self-serving way. In many of the countries in the study it was found, for example, that suspects were informed of their procedural rights in a formalistic manner that did not enable the suspect to understand them, or to make informed decisions about whether to exercise their procedural rights. In some countries, it was found that some police officers would either discourage suspects from exercising them, or prevent them from doing so. Written recording requirements are ineffective in disclosing such practices and, in practice, can make it more difficult for suspected and accused persons to challenge them. It has been found, in other countries, that alternative ways of assuring compliance, such as placing responsibility for informing suspects of their procedural rights on officers independent of the investigation, and electronic recording of the informationgiving process and of interrogations, has been effective in ensuring that procedural rights are complied with, and in making the processes sufficiently transparent to enable them to be effectively challenged. Regulating for such mechanisms should be actively considered in order to ensure that the procedural rights embodied in the Directives are effective. It was noted earlier that whilst appropriate laws and regulations are a pre-condition for procedural rights to be effectively available, they are not sufficient. In order to ensure that procedural rights are routinely available for suspected and accused persons, a ‘whole-system’ approach is needed, which recognises the context in which procedural rights are to be implemented, and which makes connections between the various factors which determine whether they are effectively available. The conditions under which procedural rights have to be given effect at the early stages of the criminal process, where a suspected or accused person has been arrested and/or detained, are such that decisions and processes have to be made or completed relatively quickly, and often in difficult circumstances. From the police perspective, this requires clear and relatively simple protocols and procedures, and mechanisms – for example, to secure interpretation, or to contact an appropriate lawyer – that are designed to work with a minimum of effort and delay. From the perspective of suspected and accused persons who, particularly if they have not been arrested or detained before, are likely to be apprehensive and potentially vulnerable, it requires clear information (in a language that they can understand) about their position, and their rights, and mechanisms and facilities to ensure that they can make decisions about, and exercise, their rights as effectively as possible. Whilst some of the countries have, to varying extents, catered for such a context, in many of them, there are significant practical obstacles which impede effective realisation of the objectives of the Directives. With regard to the right to interpretation and translation, whilst the laws of all of the countries in the study provide for such a right for persons arrested and/or detained (subject to the specific limitations identified in respect of Bulgaria and Romania), the research identified a number of practical problems. Whilst in some, although not all, countries the law is clear about who has responsibility for determining the need for interpretation (and in Italy and Slovenia, responsibility is place on the suspected or accused person themselves), in none of them is the procedure for determining need, nor the criteria to be applied, effectively regulated. The result is that police officers are left to determine need on an ad hoc basis, which is heavily reliant on the skills and attitudes of the officer concerned. The letter of rights is available in a range of languages in some countries (in Slovenia, in 24 languages), but in others the police have to rely on an interpreter being available to orally translate it, which results in delay and, in some cases, suspects not being informed of their procedural rights in a timely fashion, if at all. Around half of the countries have a national system for registering and/or certifying interpreters, but in some of them, the criteria for registration or certification are not sufficiently robust to ensure that they include only 58