The incident which saw the police requiring a local councillor to strip naked after he was arrested on suspicion of misappropriating council property reveals the need more urgently than ever before to structure and legislate on police interrogation procedures.
Let’s take the facts of this case into consideration: Martin Debono is a respectable individual who has no criminal record. The offence he allegedly committed, though listed as misappropriation for the purposes of the law, was actually making personal use of a laptop that belonged to the council.
Had he been taken in on drug charges or some similar offence, or was obviously a danger to himself or others, then a strip search may have been advisable. However, given the offence he allegedly committed, it was wholly out of proportion. One might go further and say that even an arrest in such a case was a step too far.
Yet beyond this individual case are issues surrounding the questioning of suspects that must be addressed if Malta is to consider itself a modern European Union member state.
An important though belated step was taken at the start of last year when legislation came into force allowing suspects to consult a lawyer. Unfortunately, however, that law is incomplete; in particular because it only permits a suspect to obtain legal advice before the interrogation process begins.
Crucially, it does not provide for a suspect to be accompanied by his lawyer during questioning – considered an important right in many other countries.
In the councillor’s case, this facility might have meant the lawyer objecting to such a procedure in his client’s case, sparing both him and, in the wake of the event, the police obvious embarrassment.
Apart from this, a lawyer’s presence would ensure that the process of questioning is not oppressive and falls within acceptable norms.
Another gaping hole relates to the recording of interviews – or, rather, the lack of it – which seems archaic in an age where technology allows even children to view and record their interactions on a computer screen.
For good reason, many countries with legal systems as advanced as ours place strict requirements on the police when it comes to filming questioning processes.
The rationale is twofold: First, it helps protect the rights of a suspect since any admissible evidence gathered in an interviewing room can be assessed and scrutinised by the courts if necessary; second, it protects the police against false claims made by defendants that they either fabricated statements or used improper tactics.
This does not just guarantee that proper procedures are followed. It ensures certainty, which is a crucial element when it comes to public faith in the criminal justice system.
It means that when someone like former Sliema mayor Nikki Dimech first makes a confession and then claims it was improperly obtained, there would be no need for conjecture and discussion, as practically all the evidence would be available for everyone to see.
This is as much in the interests of the police as it is of a suspect.
Yet in Malta all this is inexplicably absent. Although they should always apply common sense and weed out over-zealousness, in circumstances where there are no laws to govern some of their practices the police can only be blamed to a certain extent when their actions seem to the rest of us to be out of proportion.
They need guidance, as do we, and that can only come in the form of coherent, comprehensive and immediate legislation.