Inside Police Custody 2 Recommendations for the legislature and the bar associations 10. In light of the research results, we recommend that the legislator and the bar associations take steps with a view to ensuring that appointed defence counsels provide their clients with quality legal aid. To this end, we recommend the following: a. In accordance with § 19 of the Recommendation on legal aid, a system of accreditation for legal aid lawyers should be put in place and maintained. b. In accordance with § 17 of the Recommendation on legal aid, a general system to ensure the quality of the services provided by legal aid lawyers should be in place, based on the regular monitoring and evaluation of the appointment system. Recommendations for the legislator and for all participants of the criminal procedure 11. With a view to ensuring that the practice of ex officio appointments could be adequately assessed, the concerned state authorities should be obliged to collect relevant data about e.g. the number of and grounds for appointments in the different stages of the proceeding, the amounts paid to cover the fees and costs of appointed counsels, etc. 12. As the country report shows, the New CCP and its by-laws bring along positive changes in several areas in terms of compliance with the Roadmap Directives. However, a lot will depend on the stakeholders participating in the criminal procedure and the practice developed by them in terms of whether the new legal provisions will live up to their promise or not. Therefore, it would be important in our view for both the legislator and the stakeholders participating in the criminal procedure to systematically assess the practice emerging under the New CCP. A.4 Italy – Conclusions and Recommendations Major issues In recent years, recourse to pre-cautionary custody has decreased, as shown by the following data: from almost 200,000 arrests in 2009, it has moved to about 173,000 in 2015. Even the use of prison in the very first phase of deprivation of liberty has diminished: in 2010, 23,008 people entered the penal institutions for a period of less than 3 days, pending the validation hearing and waiting (almost always) for a ‘speed trial’ (‘processo per direttissima’); in 2017 the entrances in prison were 5,992. In 60.4% of cases it was foreign nationals, often without a regular domicile. The decrease is undoubtedly a consequence of the entry into force and application of law n. 9 of 17 February 2012. Following the transposition of the European Directives 2010/64, 2012/13 and 2013/48, the rights to information, translation and legal assistance have been strengthened. The right to defence of defendants and suspects is facing major obstacles when defendants and suspects are not native Italian speakers. The transposition of the Directive 2010/64 introduced important innovations such as the free translation of written and oral documents even in the event of a conviction, 75