In the Criminal Justice System, legal proceedings in court trials follow a systematic institutional structure, where the attorney or officer has control over the case. However, when dealing with “vulnerable witnesses”, differing linguistic development or comprehension levels interrupt these institutional roles. Children under the age of 17 undergo a different legalistic process in interviews, as well as the mentally disabled. Previously, interview procedures were conducted on any client, regardless of background differences. Overtime it was noted that hearings were not fair to children due to them lacking the ability to follow and understand these interview procedures. New guidelines were instilled where the proceeding was designed …show more content…
These factors include differences in lexicon, syntax, grammar, and pragmatics (308). When dealing with children, the guidelines are broken down into four phases, rapport, free narrative, questioning, and close (297). The interviewer begins to build a rapport by asking the child neutral based questions. For example, ‘Shall we talk a bit about things you like and your house cos I don’t know you very well yet do I?’ (299). These open questions allow the children to freely express themselves and feel more comfortable with the environment, and access their cognitive abilities. In addition, it is essential for the interviewer to have the mindset of a child, in order to form a consistent turn taking and gain credible information. The free narrative phase is where the child describes his or her account of the incident, and is encouraged to use his or her own lexicon. To illustrate, the interviewer tells the child, “please tell me what happened” (302). The child then can explain the incident in its own words. However, information tends to be omitted depending on the child’s age. This can lead to a weakened account, which can be strengthened if the interviewer asks more questions. For example, a child witness aged 6 stated their account as, “I came home, my dad sent me up to go in the bath. I go out the bath my dad gave me the towel and said, ‘ go downstairs and get dry’. I
The book “No Matter How Loud I Shout” written by Edward Humes, looks at numerous major conflicts within the juvenile court system. There is a need for the juvenile system to rehabilitate the children away from their lives of crime, but it also needs to protect the public from the most violent and dangerous of its juveniles, causing one primary conflict. Further conflict arises with how the court is able to administer proper treatment or punishment and the rights of the child too due process. The final key issue is between those that call for a complete overhaul of the system, and the others who think it should just be taken apart. On both sides there is strong reasoning that supports each of their views, causing a lot of debate about the juvenile court system. Edward Humes follows the cases of seven teenagers in juvenile court, and those surrounding them.
While sitting at juvenile court, I never got a night’s sleep without waking to wonder if at least one decision I made that day had been the best for a child. It struck me that it might be possible to recruit and train volunteers to investigate a child’s case so they could provide a voice for the child in those proceedings, proceedings which could affect their whole lives.” -Judge David W. Soukup, Founder of CASA
The problem faced by the deaf community is the injustice they encounter when in the criminal justice system. Someone who is deaf or hard of hearing has at least a 50 percent loss of hearing in one ear (Ridgeway 2009), and some may be able to read lips. However, only ½ of all spoken sounds can be translated into American Sign Language (Ridgeway 2009), which makes it difficult for the deaf to communicate without using sign language. Because English and sign language are not the same language, many deaf people are illiterate because of a lack of schooling past a certain age. Even those with schooling up to the age of 18 or older are often functionally illiterate, read at a grade level of second grade or below, and have unintelligible speech (Vernon 2010). Furthermore, there is a segment of the deaf population that is incompetent or minimally competent in terms of understanding the legal process; those people are defined as having Primitive Personality Disorder (PPD). Due to all of this, there are those in the deaf community who are deemed as having Linguistic Incompetence, which means a defendant is declared incompetent to stand trial because he/she does not understand the charges made against them (Vernon 2005).
...actice in social work interviewing – keeping the child in mind”. Milton Keynes. The Open University.
Thousands of kid criminals in the United States have been tried as adults and sent to prison (Equal Justice Initiative). The debate whether these kids should be tried as adults is a huge controversy. The decision to try them or to not try them as an adult can change their whole life. “Fourteen states have no minimum age for trying children as adults” (Equal Justice Initiative). Some people feel that children are too immature to fully understand the severity of their actions. People who are for kids to be tried as adults feel that if they are old enough to commit the crime, then they are old enough to understand what they are doing. There are people who feel that children should only be tried as adults depending on the crime.
There has been considerable debate worldwide, regarding the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in the criminal justice system. Particularly, arguments have surrounded wrongful convictions that have resulted from incorrect eyewitness evidence (Areh, 2011; Howitt, 2012; Nelson, Laney, Bowman-Fowler, Knowles, Davis & Loftus, 2011). The purpose of this essay is to consider psychological research about the accuracy of eyewitness testimony and its placement in the criminal justice system. Firstly, this essay will define how eyewitnesses and their testimonies are used within the criminal justice system and the current debate surrounding its usage. Secondly, the impact of post-identification feedback will be used to show the affect on the confidence of a witness. Thirdly, studies around gender related differences will show how a witnesses gender can affect memory recall and accuracy. Fourthly, empirical studies will be used to highlight how a psychological experience called change blindness can cause mistakes in eyewitness identification. Finally, the effect of cross-examination will be used to explore the impact on eyewitness accuracy. It will be argued, that eyewitness testimony is not accurate and highly subjective, therefore, the criminal justice system must reduce the impact that eyewitness testimony is allowed to have. Developing better policies and procedures to avoid wrongful convictions by misled judges and jury members can do this.
Psychological research shows that eyewitness testimony is not always accurate, therefore it should not be used in the criminal justice system. Discuss.
Every day a child is called on to testify in a courtroom. Children who have to testify in open court are easily influenced by outside sources. This paper will show the reasons children should not be used as witnesses in a courtroom. I will show all the different influences that a child receives and prove them uncredible. The interview process can influence a child greatly. Ceci and Bruck (1995) found a study that shows that child witnesses may be questioned up to12 times during the course of an investigation. The questioning process can take up to a year and a half to be completed. Children are not capable of remembering exact details for that period. Their answers to questions will change each time he or she is asked. This is because they do not retain information in the same way as an adult. Most studies have shown that children start to lose their ability to recall an event accurately only 10 days after the original event has happened. Another factor in a child’s ability to recall an event is stress. A child can go into a shock stage and repress all memories of what has happened to them. These memories may not resurface for many years. This affects a child’s ability to identify the suspect in photo and live line-ups. The amount of stress a child goes through affects their ability to answer questions in an interview, if they cannot remember what has happened, how are they supposed to answer the myriad of questions the interviewer will ask them.
Since the establishment of the first juvenile court in Chicago Illinois for over 100 years (Grisso, 199,813) ago, psychologists have continued to show a strong presence in juvenile proceedings and assist the juvenile justice system, as well as young people involved in it. a special court and the justice system for minors, partly in response to the recognition that adolescents, while clearly shows greater cognitive, emotional and behavioral capacities were established than their younger counterparts, do not have many of the skills that adults and relevant to the legal decision making and criminal responsibility (Otto and Borum, 2004) demonstrators. As a result, the juvenile court was to consider the criminal behavior of minors in context of development, with a greater emphasis on rehabilitation and decreased attention on the punishment (Zimring, 2000). Since the juvenile court was to focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment, the dramatic changes in the landscape of juvenile justice in 1966 and 1967, changing forever the denial of constitutional guarantees for minors. In its decisions in Kent v. United States (1966) and In re Gault (1967), the Supreme Court of the United States asked if the ideal rehabilitation of the
I agree with the significant points made by Ashleigh, Grace, and Donna regarding testimonial support from the prosecution and defendant perspectives.
Evidence provided in many courtroom cases can range from DNA samples, eyewitness testimony and video-recordings, to name a few. What happens when one of the main sources of information in a case comes from a child? Even worse, what if the child is the victim in the case? The topic of children participating and providing testimony in courtroom settings is an image that, presumably, most would not associate as a “usual” place for children. Yet in cases such as sexual abuse or violence towards a child or within the child’s family, it is not impossible to have cases where children are the predominant source of information provided for judges and jurors. Ref It is then important to consider the reliability of children’s testimonial accounts much like how adult testimonies are examined. The question of focus is then, to what extent can we rely on child eyewitnesses? Specifically, what factors influence the veracity of their testimonies?
Double victimization means that a crime victim is victimized twice in two separate periods of time. Firstly, the victim suffers due to criminal incident and then later on the negative experiences within the criminal justice system make him suffer even more. Double victimization is also known as post crime victimization or secondary victimization. It raises many questions on our current criminal justice system, which is supposed to support and encourage the victims to speak up against crimes rather than making them suffer even more. This double victimization can also happen through post crime social behaviors. For example in rape or assault cases, victim is blamed by the community usually. “The types of secondary victimization include victim
“With the language in J.D.B. as a guide, there is now an open door that litigators can walk through to make a variety of challenges when a seasoned law enforcement officer questions an immature child” (Tepfer). Even Justice Samuel Alito agreed with the previous statement, adding that in future cases dealing with children the court should consider age and additional characteristics that could affect the person under interrogation. Because there is not a written rule that can be applied to all cases, there have still been many issues dealing with children subjected to police questioning. In the case People v. White, the primary focus was whether the officer should have known that the suspect was at an understanding of the Miranda warnings or if the suspect was in a position to make a self-incriminating
The interview can have many difficulties and can lead to children placing fallacious charges onto a person, depending on how the interview is performed. Some of the problems with the interviews are leading questions, and interaction between an interviewer and the child. An interviewer can actually cause a child to become confused in the way they remember things if they do not ask questions in an appropriate way. The interview br...
In recent years the role of victims in the criminal justice system has risen into prominence, inspiring much research into victim experience and possible reform. There are a multitude of factors that influence policy makers in relation to reforming the criminal justice system, one of which is victims. However, victims while they can be catalysts for reforms such as the case of James Ramage among others, they still play a relatively minor role in influencing policy change.