Wrongful Convictions Among Juveniles

 

Just a short while back, we looked at a new study that reveals some very disturbing information about false confessions . Namely, the fact that they are so easy to elicit. But what is even more troubling is that among juveniles the situation is even worse.

According to Steven A. Drizin, a clinical professor of law at Northwestern University, false confessions make up 16% of all known wrongful convictions. Interestingly enough, juvenile’s represent a larger percentage of that.  An average of 13% of adult wrongful convictions stemmed from false confessions, while for juveniles the number was a much higher 42%.

A separate study conducted by Gross, et. al., entitled Rate of false conviction of criminal defendants who are sentenced to death also showed that the younger the accused, the more likely they are to falsely confess. Specifically, 25% of juveniles aged 16 and 17 who were wrongly convicted, were due to false confessions. But for juveniles aged 12 to 15, the false confessions rate was much higher, coming in at 69%.

Of those juvenile arrests 94% of them were of color

This is supported by research done by the Innocence Project. According to their data, 10% of the 329 people exonerated by DNA were arrested as minors. Of those juvenile arrests, 94% of them were youths of color. In addition, every one of them was tried as an adult, even though many of them were as young as 14 at the time of their arrest.

The Innocence Project believes that there are some very important facts here that cannot be overlooked. And especially with regard to this particular demographic. First, apparently 75% of exonerees who were arrested as minors were implicated by other children. Second, many of them were accused of committing crimes in large groups. And finally, 84% of the people of color who were arrested as juveniles and later exonerated, were arrested due to false confessions and guilt confessions.

The facts of the matter are clear. Children accused of crimes should be handled very carefully, and only by trained professionals who do not benefit in any way from their confession. While police training is very comprehensive, and the law allows an officer a lot of latitude for using coercive methods in order to gain a confession, this doesn’t work with children.

Children are considerably more vulnerable to false confessions due to a host of reasons. Their inability to fully comprehend the implications of a false confession, their lack of developed coping skills for handling stressful situations (like an interrogation), and their youthful suggestibility all make them easy targets for false confession.

Many suggestions have been made over the years for how this can be avoided in future. And while recent developments in crime solving techniques, like DNA sampling and forensic chemistry, have advanced in leaps and bounds in the last decade or so, we are not out of the woods yet. Detailed recordings made of every interaction between officers and suspects would also help as well, by eliminating issues like accidental contamination of the interview. Another possible solution is juvenile interviews being conducted by forensic interviewers who are not affiliated with police or prosecutors.

Either way, something needs to change, and it needs to change soon. Children are our greatest resource, and we cannot continue to incarcerate them for crimes they didn’t commit.

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