Sociology

The juvenile justice system was established as a special court in order to hear and try cases involving juveniles or persons who are below the age of eighteen. The juvenile court system is sui generis, or in other words, it has a class of its own. It was created based on the presumption that a minor, or one that is below eighteen, is different in all aspects of life as compared to an adult thus, the very purpose for its creation is to rehabilitate the youth. The enactment of the Bill of Rights was considered to be a major step in the England Constitution (Kids.net.au 2010). It is deemed as the predecessor of the US Constitution which expressly states that no person can be compelled to be a witness against himself and he or she can refuse to answer a question if such response can provide self-incriminating evidence (Find Law 2010). This Fifth Amendment right was included in the Constitution in order to protect persons from the abuse of authority of the government. If those who have legal capacity can be easily subjected to the abuses of the law enforcers, even more so are the juveniles who are more prone to such abuses because of their tender years. This situation sought to be avoided by the law still happens in the world today. Yet, there are those who claim that questioning a minor has it s own advantages and disadvantages.

The UK government improved its provision for youth offenders in the past years in accordance with the Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which states that children who come in contact with the law must be given protection, humanity in respect (UNICEF 2004). In this regard, police officers who question minor children about some possible criminal activity must do so in strict compliance with the Miranda principles. In Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the Supreme Court upheld the right of the people against self-incrimination as provided for by the United States Constitution. Those who are subjected to custodial interrogation about matters that may incriminate them are afforded some procedural safeguards that are specified in this case. These people must first be given a warming prior to questioning that they have a right to remain silent, and that any statement that they may say might be used as evidence against them. They also have a right to counsel, and if they cannot afford to retain one, the state will provide it for them.

In the case of In re Gault (1966), the Supreme Court held that if a counsel was absent due to some valid reason when the admission was obtained, greatest care must be taken in order to ensure that the admission was voluntary, in the sense that it was not forced nor suggested while at the same time, it was not the result of mere ignorance of ones rights or of an adolescent, fantasy, or of fright or despair. This case illustrates two problems that can emanate from questioning juveniles in the absence of a counsel or guardian. First is the question of whether or not the youth has the mental capacity to comprehend the rights being given to him by the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination which was explained to him by stating the Miranda warning. Assuming for the sake of argument that the juvenile knows his rights, there still lies the question of whether or not he will be able to invoke it successfully if he is put in a small room alone for interrogation while talking to law enforcers who are throwing accusations at him (Krzewinski 2002 356).

Furthermore, even if the minor was able to make a voluntary and intelligent statement, the reliability of such statement may still be questioned for many reasons such as the incapacity of the minor to reason as an adult, there is a possibility that the minor only made such statement because it was suggested to him. In addition, the tendency of minors to provide a confession that can be completely true or false should be considered as well. Thus, the police officers who subjected the youth to custodial investigation without any guardian or counsel have the burden of proving that the answers they got from the minor was not a product of force and intimidation because the Fifth Amendment is very clear. If there was any doubt as to the procedure and the validity of the custodial investigation, the doubt must be resolved in favour of the minor who was subjected to such questioning without his guardian. Questioning a juvenile has many repercussions not only to the law enforcers who questioned the minor but also to the minor himself because a confession is an admission of guilt, and as such, it is a very powerful piece of evidence (Young 2000 16).

Many people are familiar with what happened to the boy named Ryan Harris. In 1998, two boys, ages seven and eight, were charged of murder of an eleven-year old. The two boys who were accused confessed to the Chicago Detective named James Cassidy. They claimed that they hit Ryan in the head with a brick to steal his bike. After a few months, the charges were dropped because according to medical experts, the boys could not have produced the semen that was found in the underpants of the victim (Ruethling 2005). Investigations show that this was not the first time that James Cassidy elicited a confession from a ten-year old. A boy in Chicago was convicted of murder of his eighty-four year old neighbour. The police charged the boy with murder despite the fact that the prints of the minor were never found in the house. The palm and shoe prints found were not even a match to the juvenile. The victim named Anna Gilvis was 173 pounds. She was found tied up with a telephone cord around her arms and neck and was dragged through the house. They based the case entirely on the confession of the boy. The suspect appealed in 2000 and claimed that Cassidy yelled at him and told him that he knows that it was he who killed the woman. He also mentioned that Cassidy told him that God will forgive him, so he just broke down and confessed to the murder (Mills 2002).

According to Richard Leo, an expert in child witness and professor at University of California, if police tactics are dangerous and persuasive to adults, they are even more dangerous and persuasive when used to children. Kids have a tendency to yield and admit just to make the interrogation stop. He further said that a false confession is but a natural consequence of the toughness of the police because the kids are more susceptible and vulnerable to confess. The immaturity and inexperience of a child under fourteen years old and the disadvantage of confronting such child in a police interrogation cannot be ignored by the courts. It is a standard practice to make the suspects believe that there is overwhelming evidence against him and their message is always the same The outcome will be bad if the suspect will remain silent and good if the suspect talks. Professor Leo claimed that the Miranda warnings are useless to children because they almost never understand this right (Bach 1999).

These cases are but few of the evidences which illustrate that arresting a juvenile causes a lot of conflicting policies (Divine 1999 16). It is the responsibility of the court officials to ensure that the Constitutional rights of the youth are well-protected and recognized. In the U.K., they require audio recordings of all police interrogations since 1984 in order to prevent the tendency of forcing innocent persons into confession. Italy enforced a rule that all written statements to be admitted at trial will only be recognized as such if accompanied by a video or audio record (JFBA 2003).
This is not to say that the juveniles can get away with whatever crime that they committed. If these youth are indeed guilty of a crime, the fact that they are minors will not shield them from liability in the eyes of the law. The law enforcers must hold them accountable for their acts for the protection of the community.

Today, the crime involving juvenile violence has reached an alarming rate, and it is for this reason that many states have lowered their age of responsibility and implemented life sentence (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention OJJDP 1998). In England and Wales, the age of criminal responsibility is ten years old which is one of the lowest in the whole European continent. Ten to fifteen years old form part of the twenty five percent convicted offenders. These past few years, the UK government added legislations that tighten the punishment for child offenders. They have also introduced tagging schemes for juveniles on bail. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights expressed their concerns that the involvement of some criminal justice agencies creates an invitation of a criminal labelling of children at a young age that is not easily shaken and that most of the laws does not make a clear distinction between the adults and children. The number of juvenile offenders in the UK doubled in ten years and now, they have more child inmates than any country in the entire continent and this is something that the UN Committee on Rights of the Child showed great concern at. Government officials held that the purpose of sentencing children is to prevent recurrence of crime but statistics showed that it failed its purpose (UNICEF 2004).

It is a given fact that minors are afforded special treatment when it comes to interrogation and custodial investigation, but there are also instances when people use the minority as an excuse for the commission of a crime. Even if this is the case today, being young does not give a person a license to transgress the law. This is the lesson that many states want to impart to young people. This is also the principle that most of the law enforcers claim every time they want to question juveniles without any guardians. They want to catch the lie and make these minors realize the gravity of the crimes that they committed.

The disadvantage of having a parent or a lawyer present at the time of questioning of the minor is that the custodial investigation becomes useless due to the fact that the minor cannot answer questions that are important to the case. The parent or the lawyer present can always tell the minor not to answer the questions being asked by the police, and because of this failure to cooperate, justice cannot be obtained.

Justice can also be denied if a guardian or a lawyer is present because their presence can prevent children from admitting responsibilities for a crime that they did commit. Many people know that minors can easily be swayed due to the frailty of their minds thus, the police are forbidden to ask them incriminating questions without any guardian. This vulnerability of the children can go either way. For instance, even if a child is ready and willing to admit, the parents and the lawyers can scare the child and convince him not to do so in order to escape liability. This will then put the police officers on a dead end because they have no choice but to adhere to the procedural rules stated in the law. The process of interrogation is important because its main objective is to obtain confession and incriminating details and statements from the suspects (McConville and Baldwin 1982).  The police interrogation and confession are essential in gaining control of the case (Leo 2008).

Questioning  a child in the absence of any parent or guardian bears a great disadvantage especially on the part of the police officers because they do so at a huge risk. If the child alleges that he or she was merely coerced into making a confession, there is a big possibility that such confession will not be admissible in court. As a consequence, the case will be dismissed unless the law enforcers find other evidence to support their accusations. On the other hand, questioning a minor without any parent or guardian also has its own advantages because there are times when the presence of a lawyer or a parent can stand in way of extracting the truth out of the minors mouth.

In the interest of justice, it is much better to question the youth accused of a crime in the presence of a guardian than without one because the repercussions of such abuse of authority by the law officials are irreversible not only in the eyes of the child but also in the eyes of the society. Government officials in the performance of their functions enjoy a presumption of regularity, and in the absence of contrary evidence, every confession that they elicit from an accused shall be deemed validly extracted. It is also a fact that once a child has been convicted, the sympathy of the people will immediately shift to the victim and not to the convicted youth. Despite the existence of cases wherein the conviction of the minor has been reversed, the damage to their lives has already been done. Justice may have been served on the part of the victim, but not to the youth involved because an injury such as this one will take a lifetime to recover. Thus, in cases like this, it is as if justice has not been served at all.