The aim of the study was to check whether minorities such as LEP/ZEP (limited/zero English proficiency) speakers can expect the same access to justice as competent English speakers in a majority language (US English) justice system. The main hypothesis is that, due to linguistic and cultural factors, the instances of miscommunication in the…

Police call-takers need to gather as much data as is needed, as quickly as possible, to determine whether and what action should be taken. On analysing 514 calls to a UK centre handling emergency (999) and non-emergency (101) calls, we find that the call-taker's first substantive question already carries a diagnosis of the merits of the caller's…

Effective police interviews are central to the justice process for sexual assault victims, but little is known about either actual communication between police officers and witnesses or the alignment between guidance and real practice. This study investigated how police officers, in formal interviews, follow 'best evidence' guidance to obtain…

This article engages in a reflexive, critical, analysis, re-examining data from an earlier project that used qualitative interviewing to investigate the experiences of women who came into contact with police because of situations of "verbal abuse." In the present article, we use discursive psychology to explore how the women navigated…

At first glance, communicating a suspect's rights in police interviews appears to be a straightforward task. However, it is more complex than it appears. In particular, for suspects who come from different cultural backgrounds or legal systems and who rely on interpreters in police interviews, ensuring a thorough understanding of their rights and…

Two issues are addressed: (1) the scope of linguistics, and (2) the social justice issue of police procedures for dealing with limited proficiency speakers of majority languages. These are explored by examining evidence produced by police in court and the language addressed to second-language speakers by police, particularly official cautions.…

Discusses revisions of the New South Wales Police Code of Practice designed to encourage interpreters, improve interviews, and enhance intelligibility of scripted cautions. Each of these issues is framed in terms of a model of applied linguistics in which an issue or problem is defined, a solution is proposed and implemented, and the success of…