12 Child in the Legal System

Question 1

What are the focus points for understanding a child in the legal system?

Answer 1

1. Understanding the legal system
2. Development of memory ability
3. Social & emotional development

Question 2

What is the background on victims/witnesses of crime for children in the legal system?

Answer 2

Special case of child abuse: when they are the sole witness

Statements are super important with a sole witness to prosecute especially when it is a 5-year-old child

Question 3

What is the background on the type of questioning that can occur in a child in the legal system?

Answer 3

Pretrial (investigative interviews) - parent or caregiver starts asking questions

During court appearance: evidence-in-chief and cross-examination - everything you are saying is scrutinized so it is specifically difficult for young children to do

Question 4

Why do children require special treatment in the legal system?

Answer 4

They are considered “vulnerable witnesses”

• A group of people with cognitive delays considered as vulnerable witnesses
• Ethnic backgrounds

Question 5

What are some important factors kids should understand in the legal system?

Answer 5

Understanding court processes
-Issues for kids to understand court processes by lack of understanding

Understanding the concept of truth and lies

Question 6

In understanding court processes, what fears do you think the child would feel?

Answer 6

• Speaking in front of others
• Making a mistake
• Punishment for mistakes
• Retaliation (increased from 7-13 yrs)
• Having to see the defendant

Question 7

What is Cashmere & Bussey (1990): Comprehension study?

Answer 7

• Need to prove own innocence
• Likelihood of jail for witness
• Role of witness
• Need to tell the truth
• Cognitive and emotional responses are interlinked -> struggled with understanding questions

Question 8

What type of support and preparation for court do children need?

Answer 8

• Helping children understand what to expect
• Interactive courtroom diagram
• Website of justice & attorney general
• Older children: cartoon version of the charter of victims rights

Question 9

What type of screens and CCTV help children in understanding court processes and/or relieve a child’s fear?

Answer 9

• Evidence in chief by way of the pre-recorded interview: if one was completed by the police
• In children, if the police pre-record the interview with the child they can actually tender that video as evidence as to your evidence in chief
• That video becomes the statement the child has to give rather than physically doing it in trial
• Closed-circuit TV (CCTV): is not in the actual room of the court but in another room or for older children it is screening the defendant from the child

Question 10

What is evidence in chief?

Answer 10

The main evidence is given in support of the case outlined by the main lawyer acting on behalf of the state (in a criminal case) or a private person (in a civil case) at the start of a trial. During their evidence in chief, all of the men had the same story to tell

Question 11

In understanding truth and lies, a child’s evidence can be accepted without taking the oath if:

Answer 11

a. Told it was important to tell the truth

b. Declares will not lie

Question 12

What constitutes a lie?

Answer 12

• Factuality
• Belief of speaker
• Intent of the speaker

Question 13

What did Piaget research state about lies?

Answer 13

Naughtiness of lies judged by consequences, not the intention. Till 8-10 years
-Judged by the consequence not by the act of itself - if there is no negative consequences a lie is still bad cause you’re lying

Question 14

What does more recent research state?

Answer 14

Pre-schoolers can judge intention if salient BUT evaluation of goodness/naughtiness of truth vs lies is still shaky

Question 15

What did Bussey (1992) find out about lies in children in his research?

Answer 15

Pre-schoolers, 2nd and 5th graders

• Stories which varied factuality, punishment, whether listener believed
• E.g. J scribbled on her friend’s book, J’s friend asked if she had scribbled, J said “No I didn’t scribble” (OR “yes I did”) adult said ‘I don’t believe you”, J got in trouble

Pre-schoolers:

• Understood mismatch with reality BUT
• Thought punished lies worse than unpunished lies
• Unlikely to express pride over the truthfulness

Question 16

What are two things we need to know in children understanding truth and lies?

Answer 16

• We need to know for certain that a child is telling the truth
• Testing a child’s understanding of a lie

Question 17

According the NSW Oaths ACT (1990) on whether children can be encouraged to tell the truth, a child’s evidence can be accepted without taking the oath if:

Answer 17

(i) Child is told important to tell the truth

(ii) Child declares they will not lie

Question 18

According to Lyon et al (2008) study, will this work?

Answer 18

Child development - children (4-7 years old) coached by an adult to:
(a) deny playing with dolls house or (b) falsely report playing

Compared instructions:

• Oath: “Promise to tell the truth. Will you tell me any lies?” effective
• Reassurance: “if something.. Bad happened its ok. You won’t get into trouble.. We can try to fix it” ineffective
• No instructions

Findings:

• Reassurance ineffective
• “Oath” helpful for free recall but less helpful when highly suggestible questions

Question 19

What is the truth and lie ceremony?

Answer 19

From the equality before the law bench book (NSW)

Competence to give unsworn evidence is presumed if the child is told:

• It is important to tell the truth - child states that they will do so
• Someone might as questions you don’t know the answer to, if so, it’s ok to say I don’t know
• You shouldn’t feel pressured to agree with suggestions that aren’t true (say if you don’t agree with something: say that’s not right)

*This has an important effect on what happens in trials

Question 20

What develops in understanding legal (& general) language?

Answer 20

• Vocabulary
• Grammar
• Use of language in social contexts

*Both receptive and expressive language

Question 21

What are gradual acquisition across primary school years of concepts of and vocabulary for:

Answer 21

• Number
• Distance
• Weight
• Time
• Height

Question 22

How does the vocabulary for relevant concepts affect understanding in children?
(body parts, relational terms, month/days, receptive language)

Answer 22

• Body parts: families often have idiosyncratic terms for “private” body parts
• Relational terms: before, after, yesterday, tomorrow, earlier, later
• Words for days of the week, months, seasons
• Receptive language: can children monitor their understanding of adults questions?
• Comprehension monitoring

Question 23

What does comprehension monitoring involve?

Answer 23

Identifying the problem
Selecting an appropriate strategy
Social-emotional skills

Question 24

What is Saywitz (1995) understanding of language?

Answer 24

Even if they realise they don’t understand, young children may be reluctant to say “I don’t know”/”I don’t understand”

Saywitz trained 6 and 8 years olds to:
(1) Monitor comprehension
(2) Signal lack of comprehension
Q: Will the children tell us if they don’t understand the question?

• Three groups: (1) No intervention (2) “Tell me if you don’t understand” (3) Comprehension monitoring strategy training
• Instructed children:
  o Indicated lack of comprehension more and asked for rephrasing more

Question 25

What did all this research about understanding legal (and general) language help with?

Answer 25

All this research developed a base of how we interact with children nowadays

Question 26

What is the background of the development of memory ability?

Answer 26

Miscarriages of justice

• Some of the teachers were accused of abusing the children
• More people became worried about what is going on
• Information was taken out of context - the interpretation of the police of the information that embellished the story
• Memory can be contaminated with suggestive questions and leading questions

Encoding -> storage -> retrieval

• Encode it into memory, while it’s not being used it is being stored through a serious of networks till its being retrieved
• Different factors can affect any of these stages

Question 27

What is memory ability in terms of experience?

Answer 27

Memories aren’t exact reproductions of experience: they are constructed at storage and reconstructed at retrieval

“Memory elaborates, deletes and shapes its content, at encoding, storage and retrieval”

Question 28

What type of memory ability were children found to have?

Answer 28

Poor memory and free recall in children

• More disorganized storage
• More rapid decay
• Poor retrieval strategies
• Selective retrieval: focus on one part and forget the rest
• Knowledge limitations: they don’t understand certain specifics and will explain in different ways or have no understanding of it

Question 29

How does grouping work when it comes to recalling of memories?

Answer 29

• Your knowledge (hopefully) helped you to organize the letters into meaningful groups and so store and retrieve them more efficiently

Question 30

How do we prompt children’s memories?

Answer 30

Free recall: “tell me everything you can remember about the time when” -> minimal information and few errors

Specific Qs: “what colour hair did he have?” -> maximal information but many errors

Question 31

What is the trouble with specific questions?

Answer 31

Yes/no or forced-choice (multiple choice) questions are particularly prone to errors

Question 32

Children’s limited free recall: do anatomical dolls help? (Bruck, Ceci, Franceoer & Rennick (1995)

Answer 32

Not with free recall
- a very small increase of correct reports of genital touch but no false reports of genital touch

Helpful with specific questions
-92% correctly reported genital touch but 8% incorrectly reported genital touch

Young children may be encouraged to give false reports by the dolls

Question 33

In terms of social and emotional development, children may not recall but they:

Answer 33

• Perceived expectations

- Failure to comprehend reason for questions

Question 34

In terms of social and emotional development, children may recall information but fail to report due to:

Answer 34

• Embarrassment
• Pressure not to disclose
• Threaten family if you disclose so might recall it but don’t report it

Question 35

In terms of social and emotional development, children reluctance to disclose distressing information:

Answer 35

• Lack of knowledge re-appropriate adult behaviour
• Threats
• Self-blame, embarrassment
• “it won’t make any difference”
• Perceived supportive context
• Language, cognitive competence

Question 36

Explain the child’s reluctance to say “I don’t know” and the relevant study

Answer 36

Children’s are reluctant to say “I don’t understand what you are asking” “could you say that in a different way”

Research study: asking children bizarre questions e.g. “Is milk bigger than water?”

• Most 5-7-year-olds attempted a response
• Older children more likely to qualify their answer (“it might be because…”)
• Are children misinterpreting the adult’s expectations/conversational rules?
• Very detrimental within a forensic situation
• Pressure will influence what the child will report

Question 37

What is suggestibility?

Answer 37

We are all vulnerable to accepting incorrect information/suggestions that we encounter

In general, suggestibility decreases with age

Question 38

What makes children suggestible?

Answer 38

• Poorer memory (in general)
• (respond more to) Explicit pressure by adult questioners
• (struggle more with) Source monitoring ability
  
  • > Young ones difficult to determine what they heard from someone or what they experienced themselves
• (how an adult feels about a situation or person influences the child by using it within their memories) “Contamination” by adult questioner’s preconceptions
• Simple compliance (when a child knows something didn’t happen)