Inside Police Custody 2 for identifying need is placed on suspects and accused persons themselves (which is problematic for the reasons set out in section 2.2), there needs to be a clear procedure, and clear criteria, for determining need. Unfortunately, none of the countries in the study have been able to achieve this (and therefore do not comply with Article 2(4) of the Directive). In most countries, initial responsibility for determining need is placed on police officers, often the officers who carried out the arrest or who are conducting the investigation, and they are put in the position of having to determine need without clear regulation, protocols or guidance. One consequence of this is that police officers either resort to ad hoc approaches to determining whether a suspected or accused person speaks or understands the relevant language (which means that they are very dependent on the attitude and skills of the particular officer), or seek to avoid responsibility for determining need altogether (which approach is often encouraged by the difficulty of finding an interpreter willing and able to attend the police station at short notice). Assuming that the need for interpretation is identified, responsibility is then generally placed on the police to secure an interpreter. Whilst the Directive permits remote interpretation (Art. 2(6)), this was provided for in only a minority of the countries in the study, and even in those countries was found to be rarely used. Finding a competent, appropriately qualified, and independent interpreter who is willing and able to attend the police station sufficiently promptly was problematic in many of the countries. A number of reasons may be identified as causing or contributing to this problem. Whilst around half of the countries have a national system for registering or certifying interpreters, the criteria for certification or registration varied, and in some cases were apparently not robust. In any event, in all of those countries the police were permitted to arrange for an uncertified or unregistered interpreter to attend if an appropriately qualified one was not available, and what may have been intended to be an exceptional procedure was, in practice, often the norm. Undoubtedly, the difficulty in obtaining interpreters is compounded, in most of the countries, by the low, and uncommercial, fees payable, resulting in interpreters being reluctant or unwilling to attend police stations. Three further problems identified by the research should be mentioned here, most of which could be relatively easily resolved provided that there is sufficient will to do so. First, whilst the Directive is clear that interpretation and translation provided under the terms of the Directive is to be provided free of charge to the suspected or accused person (Arts. 4.), this has not been adequately transposed into the domestic laws of a number of countries. In Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania, for example, there are various limitations on free interpretation for lawyer/client consultations. Second, whilst the concept of ‘essential documents’ for the purposes of translation has been interpreted fairly fully in a number of countries in the study (for example, Slovenia and Lithuania), this is not the case in Bulgaria (which does not provide for translation of documents during the police detention phase), and Hungary (where the right does not apply to documents which are not addressed to the suspected or accused person, such as the records of procedural actions). The third issue concerns translation of the letter of rights. Article 4(5) of the Directive on the right to information provides that member states must ensure that suspected or accused persons receive the letter of rights in a language that they understand, although there is provision for oral translation on a temporary basis. In a number of countries, such as Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and Spain, the letter of rights is available in a range of languages. However, in a number of other countries, no translations are routinely available which, given the difficulties in securing the services of an interpreter, results in needless delays and, in some cases, a failure to ensure that suspected or accused persons are informed of their procedural rights in a language that they understand. It would seem obvious that the costs of making translations available, at least in respect of the languages most frequently encountered, would easily be balanced by the financial and other benefits accruing from their routine availability. 29