14
•
It is the lawyer’s role to prepare for an effective challenge
to a request for imposing or maintaining a pre-trial
detention order. To do so effectively, access to the case
file is crucial. Existing deficits concerning the scope and
modalities of access to the case file, impacting the
effectiveness of legal assistance in pre-trial detention, are
considered in section 3.
•
Pre-trial
detention
measures
tend
to
be
disproportionately ordered in respect to foreign
suspects, due to a presumed flight risk.48 A further key
obstacle that lawyers face in all the jurisdictions covered
here is the ability to communicate with their clients,
where clients speak another language. Section 4 focuses
on problems relating to the availability of interpretation
services and, where available, the poor quality of
interpretation.
•
Finally, section 5 focuses on judicial practice in respect
to alternative measures to pre-trial detention, and
specifically the impact of the failure to exercise key
defence rights on the willingness of judges to order
alternatives – in particular the right to a lawyer from the
beginning of the proceedings and access to the case file.
48
See Wouter van Ballegooij, European Parliamentary Research Service, December 2017, Procedural Rights and Detention Conditions – Cost of non-Europe Report, p. 28,
available at: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/611008/EPRS_STU(2017)611008_EN.pdf.
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