For the first time in France, on Wednesday 24 June 2015, the Court of Appeal in Paris held the French State responsible for police action in carrying out identity checks that were held to be discriminatory and ordered it to pay €1,500 in compensation to five individuals.

Jackie Hodgson and Laurène Soubise have written a blog post about 'Written records, police stops and judicial review' in France, comparing the French situation with police checks in England and Wales.

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), Professors Jackie Hodgson and Roger Leng are conducting a research study “Securing a fair trial through excluding evidence? A comparative perspective” . The project runs from 2015-2017 and is a collaboration between the Criminal Justice Centre at Warwick and scholars from Switzerland, Germany, China, Taiwan and Singapore.

More details on the project is available at: CJC Comparative Research

Edited by Michele Caianiello (University of Bologna, Italy) and Jackie Hodgson (CJC Director) and published by Carolina Academic Press, this volume brings together a broad range of scholars working within a variety of procedural traditions in Europe, North America and China. The first section contains three papers that address the use of discretion during the investigation and prosecution stage of criminal proceedings; the second section deals with negotiated justice and various types of plea agreements in Spain, China and Italy. In the third section, different approaches to the exclusion of evidence are discussed, relating to Switzerland, Germany and a potential EU approach. The fourth section discusses discretion in relation to the death penalty in the US. At the heart of these issues is the prob-lem of reconciling prosecutorial and judicial discretion with the principle of legality. The need to avoid arbitrary decisions is key, but the authors come to differing conclusions as to the impact and value of judicial discretion at different stages of the process and in different jurisdictions.

Discretion is the theme of the collection, and the writers believe it can be characterized in positive terms, as it ensures that justice is tailored to the individual and to the facts of the case rather than being applied mechanically. However, without a clear legal frame-work, it risks allowing arbitrary decisions based on bias or other legally irrelevant factors. All of the papers collected in the book teach us something about the way that discretion plays out in different systems and how it is understood and adapted within existing legal norms and cultures.

Researchers at Warwick and Monash universities are analysing the impact of cuts to the civil and criminal legal-aid systems operating in England, Wales and Victoria (Australia). The report from the second workshop held at Monash University in July 2014 has now been published.

More information on the research project is available at the 'Access to Justice' project's website.

More specialist training is required for police, lawyers and judges involved in the interrogation of juvenile suspects across Europe, Jackie Hodgson has found. There is also a need for consistency in the way youths are safeguarded within the EU, with too much focus in some countries on the detainee as a suspect, rather than as a juvenile, academics claim.

The research, which forms part of a wider European project looking at juvenile justice, is being presented at a conference in Maastricht in The Netherlands today (Friday 16 January) by Jackie who led the study in England & Wales.

Read more about this story here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/research_finds_fundamental