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
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
Psychological research shows that eyewitness testimony is not always accurate, therefore it should not be used in the criminal justice system. Discuss.
Many parents are faced with this issue across the United States, but in Katy’s case, she has inflicted with a life changing event a terminal illness that prevents her from working and paying for child care services. Katy received a letter from her employer stating that they will no longer reimburse for child care services because of her not working. Denial of child care has contributed to the exacerbation of Katy’s symptoms and poor health outcome. Therefore, I am requesting a meeting held during this week with Katy and the Department of Social Services (DSS). The discussion will be focused on denial of child care payments and agreement for a Fair Hearing to discuss Katy’s inability to work and her limitations.
More than 200,000 children may be involved in the legal system in any given year, and 13,000 of these children are preschool age. Often with these cases involving young children, issues arise concerning credibility, vulnerability, and memory retrieval. Studies have shown that preschool age children are quite capable of providing accurate testimony, but they are also more vulnerable to distorting this memory and testimony. Public and professional opinion about the credibility of children as witnesses in court cases has been sharply divided. On one side, it is contended that when children disclose details of a circumstance, they must be believed, no matter what techniques were used to obtain this disclosure. For example, if a child is asked whether or not he/she was abused, and to describe this incident, we must believe that child because children cannot possibly generate a false report of their own sexual victimization. The other side depicts children as being helpless sponges ...
A collateral interview was conducted with Mr. Philip Neuhaus LCSW. Mr. Neuhaus reported that he has worked with Ethan this year. He indicated that he worked with the child last year. Ethan was scheduled for two times per week for half an hour. Both parents brought him with the mother bringing the child 90% of the time. There were no individual meetings conducted with the parents.
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.
This essay is going to look at eye witness testimony. It will discuss whether or not it is reliable and studies will be looked at and evaluated to either back up or refute eyewitness reliability.
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.
I agree with the significant points made by Ashleigh, Grace, and Donna regarding testimonial support from the prosecution and defendant perspectives.
For both Cognitive and Forensic interviewing, it has been found to be more effective with older children than with younger for a variety of reasons. These reasons include the natural linguistic and cognitive development of children. Older children are more likely to remember the more information about the situation they experienced through a Cognitive interview than younger children, which suggests that may be most beneficial for them. Forensic interviewing should work better with younger children than Cognitive interviewing in that it allows freedom to give unique answers and considers the child’s age and developmental level more than a Cognitive interview does. In many interviews, children with intellectual disabilities need more prompting
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?
This essay focuses on one criminal justice process, cross-examination, to allow a narrower scope of evaluation on the contemporary approaches aimed at repairing this particular issue. In 2014, Bowden, Henning and Plater approached the practice of cross-examination and stated that ‘it could lead to unreliable evidence and further trauma to the victim’ (p.539); the unreliable evidence could be due to a number of reasons but mostly from the victim’s possible unintentional misunderstanding of questions, misremembering of events after the incident and also heightened anxiety from the experiences of being involved with the criminal justice system (pp. 540-541). Additionally, Bowden, Henning and Plater suggest that direct cross-examination become replaced with video recording ahead of time conducted by a third party for victims with intellectual disabilities (2014, p. 539). Furthermore, Nair, advocates that traditional cross-examination question/answer formats are usually confusing and intimidating to intellectually disabled witnesses and therefore courtrooms should allow ‘vulnerable witnesses’ to give evidence in narrative form (2010). These developing contemporary approaches to address cross-examination issues largely consist around methods to reduce the victim’s possible misunderstanding, heightened anxiety and misremembering of events
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
Unfortunately, the therapist Shawn Connerly, and Kee MacFarlane didn’t do a great job with their interviewing the children involved in the McMartin case. Within, the case supposedly the young children experienced sexual abuse from their daycare providers. Placing children on the witness stand; to repeat what occurred in the daycare. With no customary protocol interviewing a minor involved in a sexual abuse case. The McMartin case didn’t report the kid’s cognitive factors for understanding and their abilities of memory. Shawn starting his interview off with “yucky secrets” is suggestibility a leading question for the victim to answer. Then Kee MacFarlane way of doing the interview with the children was also very leading, and rewarding the
Child perspective, this is usually taken to mean a child-friendly perspective that is informed by new approaches to the study and analysis of children and childhood (James and Prout 1990).Child must in all circumstances be seen as individuals with same rights and interests and should be given a open platform just as adults to express their views as stipulated in the convention the rights of the child (Article 4 of CRC). Children