Police interrogation and criminal adjudication of child and adolescent defendants illlegal abilities, decisions, and standards
Year: 2004
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Courts have increasingly required that children and adolescents involved in legal proceedings must be competent to waive interrogation rights and stand trial.This study examined predictors of youth's legal capacities and decisions, rates of impairments under various legal standards, and the psychometric properties of competency measures.Participants included 152 defendants aged 1 1 to 17, who were assessed with Instruments for Assessing Understanding and Appreciation of Miranda Rights (Grisso's Miranda Scales), the Fitness Interview Test-Revised Edition (FIT), the Woodcock-Johnson III Cognitive Assessment Battery, and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale for Children.The interrater reliability of the FIT and Grisso's Miranda Scales was good, with ICCs for scales falling in the .80sand .90s.Consistent with the design of the FIT and current legal standards, confirmatory factor analysis supported a three-factor model, which included understanding and reasoning, appreciation, and the ability to communicate with counsel.Performance on measures of interrogative and adjudicative abilities increased with age.These age-related differences were partially mediated or explained by cognitive development.Of the specific cognitive abilities examined (general intellectual ability, verbal ability, reasoning, long-term retrieval, attention, and executive functioning), verbal ability was a particularly strong predictor of legal abilities.Also, defendants obtained lower scores on competency measures if they showed evidence of attention deficits or hyperactivity, came from below average socioeconomic classes, andlor had spent limited time with their attorneys.Defendants did not consistently show patterns of agreement across abilities, suggesting that variations in legal standards will have a substantial impact on how many adolescents could be conaidered impaired.In terms of legal decision-making, adolescents aged 15 and younger were more likely than older adolescents to confess and waive their right to counsel, and less likely to report that they would appeal their cases or discuss disagreements with their attorneys.In addition, while adolescents aged 15 to 17 were more likely to confess, plead guilty, and accept a plea bargain if they perceived that there was strong evidence against them, younger defendants' legal decisions were not predicted by strength of evidence.The clinical and policy implications of these results are discussed.not have been possible.First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisar, Dr.Ronald Roesch, for his mentorship and guidance, for believing in me from the beginning (even when I did not), and for being a constant calming force (in the face of occasional calamity).Without him, my career path would have taken a different turn, possibly away from psychology and definitely away from any academic aspirations.I wish to thank Dr.Patricia Zapf for being for me a model and source of inspiration, Jessie Klaver for her methodological insights, Dr
Source: Summit (Simon Fraser University)
Author: Jodi L. Viljoen
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2120643629