As an example, one of the issues commonly monitored by programmes is the right to defence counsel. Over the course of a monitoring term, a large-scale programme may monitor a thousand hearings, involving hundreds of cases at different stages of proceedings where the issue of the right to defence counsel was assessed. One simple statistic that may be meaningful in providing a broad overview of the overall exercise of the right to defence counsel might be the frequency of appearance of a defence counsel generally in all cases monitored. Such information may be obtained perhaps through a review and hand count of the relevant section of the case report. However, for programmes that want further analysis or statistics on the exercise of this right in specific contexts as circumstances change, re-counting hundreds or thousands of case reports each time a different set of data is required becomes burdensome. A database might, within seconds, provide the following types of statistics from the same reports: • The number of cases involving serious crimes involving long-term imprisonment, where no defence counsel was present at trial (or the number of cases where defence counsel was present); • The number of cases where no defence counsel was appointed to an indigent defendant (or cases where such counsel was appointed); • The number of cases where no instructions were given to the defendant on the right to counsel and no counsel was obtained; • The number of cases where no instructions were given to the defendant of the right to counsel, no counsel was obtained, and the defendant was convicted. Further, in addition to generating statistics, a database is also able to produce issue lists or lists managing narrative information or analysis. For instance, for each example above where a defence counsel was not assigned (assuming the case report included this issue), a database might provide an issue report, including the monitor’s conclusions on whether the absence of a defence counsel constituted a violation of domestic law and/or international fair-trial standards. Alternatively, an issue list for those cases where defence counsel was present could display the monitor’s comments regarding the effectiveness of such counsel. For example, an issue report run on cases where no defence counsel was present during a specific time period might look as follows if generated by a database. Trial-Monitoring: A Reference Manual for Practitioners 85