Inside Police Custody 2 Right to interpretation and translation Researchers did not have the opportunity to observe how interpretation rights are guaranteed by police officers and lawyers during police hearings. All the suspects/defendants in the cases observed were Romanian citizens and presented no vulnerability which would have required interpretation services. Even so, it is very clear that the national legislative framework should be significantly amended in order to cover important requirements of the Directive 2010/64/UE on the right to interpretation and translation. Interviewed police officers have complained that sometimes it is difficult to find an interpreter during the 24 hours police arrest (and also during later phases of the criminal investigation). One cause for this seems to be the very low interpreter fees (app. 5 euros/hour) and the fact that payment is processed with delay. In many cases there are no sanctions applied if the interpreter fails to respond to the police officers’ calls. Moreover, there are cases when in the absence of an interpreter, informal means of interpretation such as Google Translate are used. Notification of rights According to the Romanian legislation, criminal investigation bodies, including police officers are obliged to inform suspects and defendants about their rights and duties in writing. The law does not stipulate with clarity how this communication should be done. This omission/ambiguity of the law permits circumventing the actual information of the person, which may be asked to sign, in a statement, a purely formal sentence, in the sense that he has become aware of his rights (without, in fact, the person being informed of the existence and content of each right provided by law). As of October 2017, suspects and defendants also have the right to a letter of rights. Unfortunately, during the observational research they were not available/provided in the police stations, therefore no assessment can be made about their impact in helping persons in police custody better understand their rights. What can be stated with certainty is that the information provided about rights has been done in a formalistic manner. In practice, police officers are slightly more careful when it comes to persons deprived of liberty because failing to notify them of their rights triggers absolute nullity of the procedure (something they want to avoid). With very few exceptions, police officers did not provide further explanations or clarifications regarding the letter of rights put in front of suspects/defendants and in none of the cases did they check whether the suspect or defendant understood their rights. The right to silence In none of the observed cases did police officers or even lawyers explain suspects and defendants the meaning of the right to silence or the consequences of remaining silent/failing to do so. In half of the cases, persons in police custody were also orally informed about this right. In two cases this was done in a dissuasive manner. Senior lawyers interviewed claim that the right to silence is presented by police officers in a manipulative way, as if not giving a statement means that one has something to hide. Access to case file documents None of the lawyers present during the observed police hearings had read any documents in the case file before talking to his/her client. The Romanian legislation is limiting for the suspect, whose right to consult 84