Thread by @atlanticesque

I was in a New England courtroom, a bail hearing for a teenage Somali burglar. The judge needed his father to agree to some terms on curfew, reporting, etc.

Not only did the Somali father not speak English, he didn’t speak *Somali.* The lawyer said he spoke tribal dialect. 🧵1/7

https://twitter.com/surplustakes/status/1899394318369968472

The court didn’t have a Somali translator on-hand, but could call an over-the-phone translation service for courts. They did so, but the Somali translator (who herself had a very thick accent and poor English grammar) said she couldn’t really understand the tribal dialect. 2/7

No one at the service spoke the dialect. The son spoke both Somali and dialect, but obviously couldn’t be trusted to explain the terms of his own bail fairly. The court was at a total impasse. The father didn’t understand anything that was going on. Idk how he even got there. 3/7

At this point I thought “ok, the sane thing to do would be to send the teen back to jail until this could worked out.” But you already know that didn’t happen.

The judge, exasperated, just told the Somali translator to do her best. 4/7

The Somali translator protested, saying that she couldn’t affirm that the father understood what she was saying or vice versa. And that was also clear to everyone watching, the father was obviously clueless. But the judge just barreled ahead, reciting what he had to recite. 5/7

Despite the father never showing any signs of understanding things like “Your son must be home by 8:00 PM” and “If your son is missing for more than one hour you must call the police,” the court approved the (low) bail and released the kid into his custody. 6/7

I’ve seen other instances like this. But this one really impressed itself upon me. A judge and his whole courtroom just pantomimed that someone with no possible chance of understanding had meaningfully agreed to terms. I was utterly outraged, and still am. 7/7