JUSTISIGNS
If you were a deaf person, who uses a sign language, and you had to report a crime, how would you do it? How would you engage with emergency services? How would you access victim supports? If you were a suspect, how would the police effectively interview you? If a sign language interpreter is provided – are they trained? Are they experienced in working in legal settings? Will the police caution be available to you in your national sign language? If you go to court, will your testimony be video recorded? Or will the spoken language interpretation become the record? If no video record is available, how might you raise an appeal if you are concerned about the quality of the interpretation? These are some of the questions that Trinity’s Centre for Deaf Studies (School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences) and project partners addressed with their award winning JUSTISIGNS Project, which looked at how Europeans who are deaf, sign language users, engage with the justice systems in their respective countries, and particularly, with police forces. Empirical data led to the development and piloting of training materials that have been rolled out across Europe and now shared internationally at www.justisigns.com, including an online course.
