Safeguarding Youth Interrogation Rights: The Effect of Grade Level and Reading Complexity of Youth Waiver Forms on the Comprehension of Legal Rights

Abstract

Summary: The extent to which youths understand their interrogation rights was examined. High school students (N = 160) from five different grades were presented with one of two Canadian youth waiver forms-varying widely in reading complexity-and tested on their knowledge of their legal rights. Results showed that comprehension of both waiver forms was equally deficient, and systematic misunderstandings of vital legal rights were discovered (e.g., the right to remain silent). There was also a positive linear relationship between high school grade level and amount of comprehension. Potential ways to enhance youths' understanding of their rights and provide them protection during interrogations are discussed.

Engineering Comprehensible Youth Interrogation Rights

“…Across the conditions, youth in higher grades outperformed youth in the lower grades on both the amount of correct details recalled and the multiple-choice questions answered correctly. These findings match our predictions, and are consistent with past research demonstrating that age is a strong predictor of ability to comprehend interrogation rights (e.g., Freedman et al, 2014;Goldstein et al, 2003;McLachlan, Roesch, & Douglas, 2011). Although cognitive abilities were not directly assessed in the current study, we suspect that the observed difference between grade levels is due to developmental differences (e.g., working memory, reading skill) between younger and older students (Luna et al, 2004;O'Reilly & McNamara, 2007;Yurgelun-Todd, 2007).…”

“…In recognition of their increased vulnerability relative to adults, youth in many Western countries have been afforded enhanced legal protections when faced with a police interrogation. Unfortunately, previous research has shown that the documents used to deliver said rights are overly complex (e.g., Rogers et al, 2012), and therefore youth often struggle to comprehend their legal rights (e.g., Freedman et al, 2014;Grisso, 1981). This lack of comprehension suggests that the enhanced legal protections-as they are currently delivered-are ineffectual in actually protecting youth.…”

“…Based on the aforementioned research regarding ways to improve comprehension of adult interrogation rights Snook et al, 2014), we predict that comprehension levels will increase with decreasing complexity of youth waiver forms. Based on the aforementioned developmental research and previous studies of youth comprehension Freedman et al, 2014), we also predict that comprehension levels will increase with increasing grade level (i.e., age of the youth).…”

“…Recent research, however, suggests that the additional interrogation rights did not coincide with the implementation of waiver forms-written documents that apprise youth of their rights-that are easy to understand (Eastwood, Snook, & Luther, 2012). The failure to create comprehensible waiver forms resulted in predictably low levels of understanding by youth and, more importantly, heightened concerns about how well youth are able to make informed decisions when facing an interrogation (Freedman, Eastwood, Snook, & Luther, 2014). As a consequence, the goal of the current research is to test the possibility of increasing youth's knowledge of their interrogation rights by engineering a comprehensible waiver form.…”

“…In addition, none of the youth comprehended all of the interrogation rights, and less than a quarter of them correctly recalled half of the information. In a followup study, Freedman et al (2014) presented two different versions of a youth waiver form-both of which are in use by Canadian police organizationsto high school students in grades 7 to 11. Freedman and his colleagues found that the students recalled approximately 40% of the main interrogation rights correctly and made a number of errors on multiple-choice questions 1.…”