Juvenile Defendants Research Articles

Lawyers and children: Is there a need for mandatory legal assistance in suspect interviews?

In 2016, Belgium introduced legislation mandating legal assistance for juvenile suspects. However, legal assistance can only serve as an effective procedural safeguard if it is provided appropriately. The current study examined how lawyers in Belgium fulfil this role in practice. Seventeen video-recorded police interviews of juvenile suspects were observed. The juveniles were aged between 12 and 17 years, and were suspected of various less serious, volume crimes. The findings of this study show that the ‘law in action’ does not always reflect the ‘law in the books’. The mere presence of a lawyer is insufficient: it is necessary for them to actively engage. Although police interviewers typically adopt an information-gathering approach, some interviews do require the lawyer’s intervention to protect the juvenile’s interests. Moreover, lawyers often restrict themselves to ‘legal’ assistance and offer limited (emotional) support. Because there is no ‘appropriate adult’ regime in Belgium, lawyers could take up this double role. The information-gathering approach also seems to enhance cooperation between lawyer and interviewer, resulting in a joint search for the truth in which neither adopts an antagonistic role when interviews are conducted properly.

Contextualizing the Impact of Legal Representation on Juvenile Delinquency Outcomes: A Review of Research and Policy

AbstractThis study examines the empirical research on legal representation in delinquency proceedings and situates it in the broader investigation of how states provide legal assistance to juvenile defendants. Our review of empirical studies found that attorney presence was an aggravating factor in dispositional decisions. After closely examining state statutory provisions on legal representation in juvenile delinquency proceedings, we suggest that the penalty effect of attorney presence is an artifact of the variation in state laws governing access and oversight of juvenile counsel. We conclude with suggestions for future research, policy, and practice.

Peculiarities of criminal proceedings against juvenile defendants

This article examines the age of responsibility of juvenile defendants in national legislation and the issues of its improvement, a comparative analysis with the legal framework of other developed countries, the material and procedural framework of criminal proceedings, gaps in it, the circumstances that must be proved in the case of minors, the importance of determining the age of the subject, the need to determine the age of the defendant., the court should pay attention to the issues related to the grounds for the release of minors from responsibility and punishment, including the advantages in imposing a sentence against minors, its features, the importance of assigning a lighter sentence and a suspended sentence, the analysis of practical examples in this area., suggestions were made on positive and negative aspects and improvement of national legislation.

APPLICATION OF PREVENTIVE MEASURES AGAINST A MINOR SUSPECT OR ACCUSED DURING THE PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION

The article considers the grounds and conditions for making a decision on applying a preventive measure against a minor, and defines the grounds for choosing a specific preventive measure. The problems that arise in connection with the need to apply a preventive measure against a minor are highlighted. Conclusions are formulated on the settlement of problems that arise when solving questions about the application of a preventive measure against a minor suspect or accused, and the optimal solution is proposed. It is indicated that it is unacceptable to apply preventive measures in certain cases against juvenile suspects and accused persons in connection with the need to protect their rights and legitimate interests. The grounds and conditions for applying certain preventive measures against juvenile suspects accused during the preliminary investigation are determined, and the expediency of refusing to apply them is justified.

ADDITIONAL GUARANTEES OF DEFENSE OF RIGHTS AND LEGITIMATE 
 INTERESTS OF JUVENILE SUSPECTS, ACCUSED ON THE STAGE OF THE PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION

The article analyzes the provisions of the criminal procedure law to implement supplementary guaran-tees to defend the rights and legitimate interests of juvenile suspects, accused on the stage of preliminary inves-tigation. Based on the analysis of law enforcement practice, the authors propose changes to certain provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation

Домашний арест в системе мер процессуального пресечения в отношении несовершеннолетних (в генезисе)

To implement the norms of international law into the practice of Russian legal system while choosing a preventive measure against an accused minor or a suspect, to decide on the most humane preventive measure is the issue of great importance. This position is reflected in Art. 423 of the Criminal Procedure Code providing the fundamental foundations of criminal procedure provisions concerning preventive measures against minors. When making a decision on restraint measures related to isolation from society, the possibility of applying an alternative, more humane preventive measure should be taken into account. The article describes the ratio of house arrest to detention. It has been justified that in the system of preventive measures house arrest should be recognized as a measure not related to isolation from society, and as a more common alternative to detention. The legislator periodically attempts to improve the procedural situation of minors involved in criminal procedure. Problems are connected with unstructured placement of norms regarding juvenile suspects and accused in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation. Secondly, it is linked with the absence of features of house arrest of minors. All this makes the author state that despite the large-scale judicial and legal reform, the legal regulation of preventive measures against minors needs to be further improved. The subject of the study is a scientific analysis of the sources of criminal procedure legislation on the legal regulation of house arrest in the system of preventive measures against minors. The purpose of the study is to provide scientific analysis of the features of house arrest applied to minors and to form an author’s position on this issue. Research methods cover systemic analysis, structural, logical, and comparative scientific methods. The results achieved are the analysis of the system of preventive measures against minors with the identification of the specifics of house arrest, the recognition of this measure as a preventive means not related to isolation from society, and the formation of the author’s version of the norm of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation governing this preventive step.

The Transplanted Appropriate Adult Scheme in China

AbstractBorrowed from England and Wales, the Chinese Appropriate Adult Scheme involves a dynamic of selective adaptation. This article analyses two salient features of the appropriate adult scheme within the Chinese context, in comparison with its counterpart in England and Wales: its complementarity of the juvenile's parent, and the passive role that appropriate adults play during pretrial interrogations. Drawing upon empirical evidence, the article argues that the transplanted Chinese appropriate adult scheme has failed to oversee the legality of interrogations, nor does it provide adequate safeguards for juvenile suspects. The concept of vulnerability that lies at the heart of the appropriate adult safeguard in England and Wales appears to be lost in translation. Rather than providing a safeguard for juveniles at their most vulnerable, the appropriate adult is more concerned with indulging the needs of the interrogators in China.

Do laypeople recognize youth as a risk factor for false confession? A test of the ‘common sense’ hypothesis

In a survey of confession experts, 94% agreed that youth is a risk factor for false confession, but only 37% felt that jurors understand this. To date, no study has tested the latter by comparing laypeople’s perceptions of juvenile and adult suspects. To address this gap, Experiment 1 participants read a lengthy (i.e. interrogation and confession) or abridged (i.e. confession-only) transcript of an ostensibly juvenile or adult suspect’s interrogation. Transcript length affected perceived pressure but not guilt judgments. Suspect age had little effect, with 75% of participants misjudging the juvenile as guilty. Experiment 2 then tested how expert testimony affects judgments of juvenile suspects. Participants read a lengthy or abridged interrogation transcript, with or without testimony from a juvenile confession expert. Expert testimony somewhat impacted guilt judgments but did not influence perceptions of the interrogation. Implications for interrogation practices, trial procedure and future research are discussed.

Evaluating causes of algorithmic bias in juvenile criminal recidivism

In this paper we investigate risk prediction of criminal re-offense among juvenile defendants using general-purpose machine learning (ML) algorithms. We show that in our dataset, containing hundreds of cases, ML models achieve better predictive power than a structured professional risk assessment tool, the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY), at the expense of not satisfying relevant group fairness metrics that SAVRY does satisfy. We explore in more detail two possible causes of this algorithmic bias that are related to biases in the data with respect to two protected groups, foreigners and women. In particular, we look at (1) the differences in the prevalence of re-offense between protected groups and (2) the influence of protected group or correlated features in the prediction. Our experiments show that both can lead to disparity between groups on the considered group fairness metrics. We observe that methods to mitigate the influence of either cause do not guarantee fair outcomes. An analysis of feature importance using LIME, a machine learning interpretability method, shows that some mitigation methods can shift the set of features that ML techniques rely on away from demographics and criminal history which are highly correlated with sensitive features.

Examining the “Gang Penalty” in the Juvenile Justice System: A Focal Concerns Perspective

There are hundreds of thousands of juvenile gang members in the United States who are at heightened risk of criminal offending, violent victimization, and incarceration. Importantly, however, incarceration in itself is a lifelong risk factor for negative social outcomes. That said, little is known about the effects of gang membership on the sentencing outcomes of juvenile offenders. The primary research question of the current study is: How does self-reported gang membership influence the likelihood of incarceration relative to similarly situated non-gang-involved juvenile defendants? To address this question, the current study uses data obtained from the Pathways to Desistance study. In a sample of 1,067 serious adolescent offenders drawn from Wave I, results show that gang affiliation is a significant predictor of incarceration. This finding was consistent across the two study sites (Phoenix, AZ, and Philadelphia, PA), ultimately providing support for a “gang penalty” in juvenile sentencing outcomes. The implications for future research, juvenile justice policy, and youth development are discussed.

The Right to a Good Defense: Investigating the Influence of Attorney Type Across Urban Counties for Juveniles in Criminal Court

Juvenile defendants in criminal court represent an especially vulnerable group for whom quality legal representation is critical. While some juvenile defendants are able to obtain private counsel, indigent defendants are provided an attorney by the government. One long-standing concern is that these court-appointed attorneys are less effective. Using data on juveniles in criminal court across 37 large, urban counties, the present study examines conviction and sentencing outcomes by comparing private counsel, public defenders, and assigned counsel. Results indicate that defendants with public defenders were less likely to be convicted, less likely to be incarcerated in prison, and served shorter prison sentences compared to defendants with assigned counsel. Contrary to hypotheses, however, the effect of attorney type was not conditioned by court urbanism. The findings suggest that public defenders provide effective legal representation for juveniles in criminal court. Research is needed to determine whether this holds across different contexts (e.g., rural).

Judge Peer Effects in the Courthouse

Although there exists a large literature analyzing whether an individual’s peers have an impact on that individual’s own behavior and subsequent outcomes, there is paucity of research on whether peers influence a person’s decisions and judgments regarding a third party. We investigate whether consequential decisions made by judges are impacted by the gender composition of these judges’ peer group. We utilize the universe of decisions on juvenile defendants in each courthouse in Louisiana between 1998 and 2012. Leveraging random assignment of cases to judges, and variations in judge peer composition generated by elections, retirements, deaths and resignations, we show that an increase in the proportion of female peers in the courthouse causes a rise in individual judges’ propensity to incarcerate, and an increase in the assigned sentence length. This effect is fully driven by female judges. We also demonstrate that the impact of proportion of female peers is not a proxy for other peer characteristics such as race and age. Further analysis suggests that this behavior of female judges is unlikely to be a reflection of an effort to conform to evolving norms of judicial stringency, measured by peers’ harshness in sentencing, but that it is due to the sheer exposure to female colleagues. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Применение видеозаписи допроса несовершеннолетних подозреваемых (обвиняемых)

The peculiarities of the organization of the use of video shooting during the interrogation of underage suspects (accused) are considered. Problems that arise in practice when using technical means when conducting investigative actions with the participation of minors are highlighted: lack of skills in handling technical means, insufficient number of technical means themselves, emotional stress when conducting video shooting, fear of making technical errors. The text of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation is subject to special analysis in relation to the use of technical means in conducting investigative actions. The feasibility of introducing the mandatory use of video footage during the interrogation of underage suspects (accused) is justified, as well as the addition of Art. 425 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation part 7 with the mandatory requirement to use video recording during the interrogation with the participation of a minor suspect (accused). Practical recommendations are made on the preparation for the interrogation of juvenile suspects (accused), the tactics of using technical means of video recording, as well as the recording and storage of evidence in the criminal case file.

МЕРЫ ПРОЦЕССУАЛЬНОГО ПРИНУЖДЕНИЯ, СОСТОЯЩИЕ В ИЗОЛЯЦИИ НЕСОВЕРШЕННОЛЕТНЕГО ПОДОЗРЕВАЕМОГО, ОБВИНЯЕМОГО: РЕАЛИЗАЦИЯ МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫХ СТАНДАРТОВ В ОТЕЧЕСТВЕННОМ ЗАКОНОДАТЕЛЬСТВЕ

Russian legislation reflects international standards for the use of coercive measures of isolation of juvenile offenders as a last resort and for the shortest possible time. However, the RF Code of Criminal Procedure does not define a closed list of exceptional circumstances to regulate the conditions for detention of juvenile suspects and accused. Neither does it define the exceptions and other conditions for the detention of adolescents in comparison with the rules for the detention of adult offenders. Further improvement of the RF Criminal Procedure Code and correction of the clarifications of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation are required to reinforce the guarantees of the rights of underage participants in criminal proceedings.

Simulated judicial decision-making for African and European American adolescents with illegal sexual behavior: The impact of medical data and victim race/ethnicity.

The perceived importance of victim and defendant race/ethnicity and medical evidence in child sexual abuse cases has been recognized separately in the literature. However, few studies have considered these factors simultaneously. Within a sample of 880 college students, an interaction effect was tested between the presence of medical evidence and the race/ethnicity of a juvenile defendant and victim using child sexual abuse case vignettes. The main effects of medical evidence and the race of the defendant were observed. Medical evidence and race of victim influenced victim believability such that medical evidence was more impactful for cases with African American victims. Further, there were interactions between the race of the defendant and the race of the victim in adult versus juvenile court decisions, sex offender registration and notification requirements, and length of sex offender registration and notification. Interracial sexual offending was associated with substantially higher punishment than intraracial sexual offending. Accordingly, several important implications for court-level decision-making processes are explored.

Intellectual Disability Affects Case Judgment Differently Depending on Juvenile Race

This research investigated how juvenile race and ctual disability affect case judgment involving recanted confession. We recruited 151 participants to serve as mock jurors using a 2 (juvenile race: Black, White) × 2 (intellectual disability: disabled, nondisabled) between-subjects design. We found that participants rendered more guilty verdicts, had higher confidence in the defendants’ guilt, and estimated a higher probability of crime commission when the juvenile defendants were White instead of Black. Consistent with the “bend-over-backwards” effect and the expectancy-violation theory, participants judged the nondisabled White juvenile defendants harshly but the nondisabled Black juvenile defendants leniently. In addition, intellectual disability was a mitigating factor, but mostly for White juvenile defendants. Black juvenile defendants with intellectual disability were often judged more harshly than Black juvenile defendants without intellectual disability. Finally, juvenile race and intellectual disability interacted to affect the evaluation of confession evidence and case outcome. Overall, the current research extended our understanding of public perception of Black and White juvenile defendants with intellectual disability.

Juror gender and confession evidence: an exploratory study of effects on empathy and trial outcomes for juvenile defendants

We explored how relations among juror gender, confession evidence, and empathy impacted verdicts for a juvenile defendant accused of a serious crime. Jury-eligible women and men (N = 132) participated in a mock trial involving a girl defendant who had either maintained her innocence, confessed voluntarily, or confessed under coercion. Participants reviewed case materials, received juror instructions, and reported their verdict and empathy for the girl defendant. A manipulation check ensured participants attended to details surrounding the confession and participants were grouped by whether they perceived the confession as voluntary or coerced. A logistic regression analysis examined main and interactive effects of juror gender and perceived-confession condition on jurors’ verdicts, and the PROCESS regression macro-examined whether effects revealed therein could be explained by empathy toward the juvenile. Juror gender did not have a significant indirect effect on verdicts in either the no-confession, B = .05, 95% CI [− .005, .85], or perceived-coerced-confession conditions, B = − .12, 95% CI [− .36, .02]. However, women’s lower levels of empathy translated into a higher conviction rate among women versus men for the juvenile who was perceived as confessing voluntarily, B = − .28, 95% CI [− .75, − .02]. Women and men differ in ways that may sometimes produce outcomes that are less favorable to juvenile defendants. Implications for jury practice and process are considered.

Overcoming Disclosure Reluctance in Youth Victims of Sex Trafficking: New Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice.

An alarming number of youth worldwide are victims of commercial sexual exploitation, particularly sex trafficking. Normative developmental processes and motivations across the adolescent period-the age when youth are at greatest risk for trafficking-combined with their history, make them highly likely to be reluctant to disclose their exploitation to police, who often encounter victims because they are suspected of delinquency and crime and who interrogate the victims as suspects. Little scientific and policy attention has been devoted to understanding how to question these victims in a way that reduces their disclosure reluctance and increases their provision of legally relevant information. In the current review, we describe research concerning trafficking victims' histories and exploitative experiences, juvenile suspects' and victims' encounters with the legal system, and best-practice forensic interviewing approaches to elicit disclosures from child victims. We highlight the implications of these areas for understanding the dynamics between how police encounter and interact with adolescent trafficking victims and whether and how the victims disclose trafficking details during these interactions. We close with an agenda for research to test interviewing methods for suspected victims of sex trafficking and with policy and practice recommendations for interviewers.

Perceptions of waived juvenile defendants across mental health diagnoses and demographic characteristics

Justice involved youth who present with diagnosable mental health issues are commonly prosecuted in criminal courts. Limited research has examined how jurors perceive and respond to transferred juveniles with mental health issues. For the current study, 252 mock jurors were randomly assigned to read one of six profiles (i.e., White male, White female, Black male, Black female, Latino, and Latina) and report culpability, deserved punishment, behavior regulation, and dangerousness for juveniles diagnosed with conduct disorder, major depressive disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, and described with antisocial traits/behaviors. A schizophrenia diagnosis was associated with less blame, punishment, and capacity for behavior regulation. A description of antisocial traits/behaviors was associated with more blame, punishment, capacity for behavior regulation, and dangerousness. White juveniles described with antisocial traits were considered more blameworthy and deserving of punishment than Latinos. Considering the temporary nature of adolescent antisocial personality characteristics, jurors should have greater awareness of the maturation process.

Juvenile Defendants’ Right to be Tried within a Reasonable Time in Cambodia: An International Human Rights Analysis

A delay in proceedings pending trial has a significant impact on defendants, particularly juveniles. The majority of prominent human rights instruments and their governing bodies seek to address the right to be tried within a reasonable time. Nevertheless, the unique position of juvenile defendants in relation to this right is considered with substantial inconsistency. Cambodia has ratified several international treaties acknowledging this fundamental right and recently adopted the Juvenile Justice Law. Consequently, this article examines the extent to which the right for juvenile defendants to be tried within a reasonable time has been incorporated into the relevant international, as well as the Cambodian legislative framework, and case law.