Law Enforcement Training, Interviewing Skills With Youth Must Be Improved
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While considerable progress has been made among law enforcement to treat young victims differently, too many police and prosecutors still fail...
Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/false-confessions/)
While considerable progress has been made among law enforcement to treat young victims differently, too many police and prosecutors still fail...
The big issue for young defendants are false confessions, since some research suggests that minors are more likely to tell interrogators what they want to hear or to brag about their gang exploits. The other concern is that youth are not equipped to adequately participate in their own defense.
A few miles off I-95, past acres of brown-and-white fields where blackbirds circle overhead, this small town in the heart of Deep South cotton country isn't known for much. It has a post office and a few churches, some abandoned houses and some nicer ones, ramshackle trailers and cotton fields. After church on a recent Sunday there, George Frierson was scuffing a shiny black dress shoe across some gravel at a railroad crossing. Back when he was a kid the rail line split this tiny, rural town along racial lines. But for blacks like him growing up in Alcolu, the train tracks signified something even more sinister than segregation.
In the United States, false confessions play a role in about one in four wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence. The confessions often come forth following hours of interrogation, resulting in a statement of guilt put on paper in front of the investigating detectives or on videotape.