ABSTRACT
I first became involved in this area of work in 1994 as the result of a speculative enquiry from a London law firm to the university department in which I worked. The case concerned a nightclub confrontation which had resulted in a fatal stabbing and the detainee, an eighteen-year-old Turkish Cypriot man with English as an additional language, was on remand in prison. The acting solicitors wanted ‘an opinion’, as they put it, ‘on the defendant’s level of comprehension and his ability to articulate accurately in English in each of the interviews’. They were particularly concerned about the initial interview, where there had been neither a solicitor nor an interpreter present and where their detainee had, essentially, incriminated himself. They were convinced that, as a result of poor English language skills, he had failed to understand not only his rights under the law but also much of the line of questioning that followed. This chapter draws on my work as an expert witness in relation to the English
language proficiency of non-native detainees and, using examples from actual cases, it describes the approach I use in assessing a detainee’s proficiency in order to fulfil the request to ‘give an opinion’. Evidence of English language ability is a normal pre-requisite for non-native speakers
of English seeking entry to communicatively demanding contexts such as university study or certain work environments. However, for those lay people involved in legal encounters such as through arrest, interrogation and court interaction, the checks are far less rigorous even though the stakes are arguably much higher. As Eades (2006: 524) points out when referring to cases relating to asylum claims ‘an interviewee with limited proficiency in the language of the interview may – simply because of language difficulties – appear to be incoherent or inconsistent, thereby leading the interviewer to a mistaken conclusion concerning the truthfulness of the interviewee’ (see Eades, this volume, on testing in asylum claims cases). Of course, the circumstances of an arrest and interrogation do not allow for formal pre-testing but, given that language proficiency is
fundamental to the reliability of evidence gained through police interviews, its relevance needs to be taken more fully into account. This is not to say that no account is taken of English language proficiency in these
situations, as can be seen in the following clause from the UK Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE).
