Awareness and comprehension of the right to silence in Queensland, Australia

Abstract

Awareness and comprehension of the Queensland Police Service (QPS) caution was investigated in a group (N = 140) of university students in Queensland, Australia.Awareness was measured before participants were shown and read aloud the QPS caution; comprehension was then assessed. Participants also completed the Australian Legal Awareness Questionnaire (ALAQ) to ascertain their knowledge of legal matters more generally. The results show that participants were generally unaware of their legal rights and had difficulty comprehending the right to silence caution. Overall, the study demonstrates that while many of participants reported understanding the QPS caution, the reality is that most did not. This is a concerning outcome considering that people already marginalised by virtue of lower education and literacy levels (many Indigenous Australians residing in Far North Queensland, for example) are further seriously disadvantaged by failing to comprehend the police caution.

Young People's Comprehension of the Rights Caution in New Zealand

“…This hypothesis was partially confirmed. Similar to other research, this sample of participants from the general population showed incomplete and inaccurate understanding of their rights (Clare et al, 1998;Kidd & Sullivan, 2014;Rogers, Sharf, et al, 2016).…”

“…International research, conducted mainly in America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, has looked at young people's comprehension of their legal rights (Clare, Gudjonsson, & Harari, 1998;Goodwin, 2009;Grisso, 1980;Kidd & Sullivan, 2014), and their overall ability to engage with legal processes (Driver & Brank, 2009;Ficke, Hart, & Deardorff, 2006;Goldstein, Condie, Kalbeitzer, Osman, & Geier, 2003). These studies have used a variety of tools, have looked at rights comprehension across varying age groups (Crawford & Bull, 2006;Ficke et al, 2006;Kelley, 2014;Thomsen, 2006), and populations, such as the general population (Clare et al, 1998), and groups of individuals involved in the justice system (Cleary, 2010;Colwell et al, 2005;Rogers, Sharf, et al, 2016).…”

“…Additionally, many of these studies were completed using samples of young offenders potentially making their results invalid for generalisation to a non-offender population (Colwell et al, 2005;Driver & Brank, 2009;Ficke et al, 2006). It is important to establish levels of understanding within the general population, as the Rights Caution is intended to protect all individuals in interrogation situations, and the current research base indicates that both offender, and general populations have low understanding of their rights (Ficke et al, 2006;Hughes et al, 2013;Kidd & Sullivan, 2014;Rogers, Sharf, et al, 2016). It is also important to establish population norms, so that specific cohorts of the population can be compared against these to determine any differences.…”

The Impact of Educational Intervention on Young People's Understanding of Legal Rights in New Zealand

“…General learning research provides evidence that repeated exposure to information aids learning (Bromage & Mayer, 1986;Congleton & Rajaram, 2011). Conversely, research on legal rights suggests being read the Cautions on multiple occasions does not lead to better understanding across any of the various aspects (Grisso, 1981;Kidd & Sullivan, 2014;Rogers et al, 2013b;Winningham, et al, 2018;Zelle et al, 2015). Therefore, it is unclear whether this would have had an impact, signifying the need for more research on this issue.…”