This book was published 16 years after the seminal Child Victims, Child Witnesses: Understanding and Improving Testimony, (Goodman and Bottoms), 1993, and addresses topics central to children's active and effective participation in legal proceedings: disclosure, interviewing, memory, testimony, and juror decision-making. In addition, it focuses on how the legal system should deal with juvenile offenders, by punishment or rehabilitation, and whether they should be treated in the adult system and held accountable as adults. This book in some ways anticipated the recent Supreme Court decisions on child and adolescent culpability as victims and offenders.
The chapters, written by widely respected legal and social science scholars, examine several key questions associated with children's involvement in the legal system. The book is divided into two parts: Part I covers the topic of children as victims and witnesses and Part II as offenders. The latter part is further subdivided into several sections regarding disclosure, memory and interviewing, children in court, expert testimony, juror decision-making, and an international overview of children's involvement in legal proceedings. In the section on juvenile offenders, the first chapter serves as a bridge between the two main sections by postulating how victims become offenders and further discusses police interroga-tion and forced confessions, juvenile transfer, therapeutic jurisprudence, girl offenders, and adults' perception of juvenile offenders, culminating in an international perspective on juvenile justice. At the end of each section, the authors summarize what has been learned in the preceding chapters and conclude that much is known, but that the knowledge and skill attained must be applied so that children and adolescents can benefit from the research.
In the introduction to the book, the authors refer to pertinent legal cases that involved children's victimization and landed them in the legal system. The authors explore factors that influence disclo-sure, recantation, and denial of abuse. Other chapters shed light on the victim's initial reluctance to disclose abuse and their subsequent ability to re-member and recount abuse accurately. Much of the research is sparked by the satanic ritual daycare abuse allegations of the 1980s and early 1990s. The authors contend that forensic interviewing is unlikely to create false memories in a child for whom sexual abuse is an implausible event. Nevertheless, interviewers should receive specialized training, conduct audio- or video-taped interviews, explore potential sources of contamination for children's reports, and interview the first person with whom the child discussed the alleged abuse (first confidant or outcry witness).
The cavalier approach to juvenile offenders transferred from juvenile court and tried in adult criminal court is a “misguided and reactionary crime control measure that exposes adolescents to the more adversarial and punishment-oriented adult criminal system where a consideration of developmental maturity is not required” (p 295), according to Reppucci et al. in their critical chapter. They cite the Supreme Court decisions in Kent v. United States, 383 U.S. 541 (1966), and subsequently In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967) that recognized the abuse of the waiver provision and the judges who arbitrarily transfer youths deemed nonamenable to treatment or a threat to public safety. Youths have been granted more adult-like due process rights and are more subject to adult-like punishment. Both the Supreme Court and forensic clinicians have addressed the developmental maturity of juvenile offenders and their adjudicative competence. Similarly, juveniles' preadjudication competence and their comprehension of Miranda rights have been questioned. Since the interrogation process often occurs in a highly adversarial and manipulative setting, adolescents may be more vul-nerable than adults in this legal context and fail to understand and appreciate the significance of their Miranda rights as an important proce-dural safeguard. In particular, juveniles subjected to police interrogation often do not understand their Miranda rights and make false confessions because of the manipulations that they undergo. Research has revealed that adolescents younger than 15 are significantly less likely to meet the adult norm for comprehension and appreciation of Miranda rights than are adults. Similarly, 15- and 16-year-olds with an IQ below 80 do not meet the adult standard of comprehension, nor is their comprehension comparable with that of same-age peers. It appears that age is the most significant predictor of the likelihood of offering a false confession. This may be particularly relevant for juvenile sex offenders who may be registered as sex offenders in regard to spe-cific types of nonserious offenses including, for example, child pornography in which a youth may look at naked pictures of an underage girlfriend or “sexting” and be persuaded to confess, come clean, but be ensnared in the legal system with its registry for sexual offenders and its indefinite sentences.
I urge all practitioners, legal, forensic, and lay, to read the chapter on Police Interrogation and False Confessions, digest it, assimilate it, and use the knowledge to advocate for our youthful charges. I anticipate that readers of this chapter will be seduced into reading other chapters in this book that will advance their knowledge and skills.
Footnotes
Disclosures of financial or other potential conflicts of interest: None.
- © 2013 American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
