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Chapter 4 - England and Wales: Empirical Findings
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- By Vicky Kemp, University of Nottingham, Jacqueline Hodgson, University of Warwick
- Edited by Miet Vanderhallen, Marc Van Oosterhout, Michele Panzavolta, Dorris de Vocht
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- Book:
- Interrogating Young Suspects II
- Published by:
- Intersentia
- Published online:
- 21 September 2018
- Print publication:
- 04 January 2016, pp 127-182
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- Chapter
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
This chapter examines police practices and safeguards connected to the interrogation of juvenile suspects in England and Wales. Arising out of concerns over police pressure encouraging false confessions in interrogations in the 1970s, the Philips Commission was set up in order to examine the duties and powers of the police and the rights of suspects in respect of the investigation of criminal offences. The murder of Maxwell Confait, a 26-year old homosexual prostitute in 1972 became a cause célebre because of the way in which the police obtained false confessions from three young people. They were all subsequently convicted of serious offences but the convictions were later quashed by the Court of Appeal. Subsequently, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) set out a legislative framework in order to protect suspects arrested and detained by the police, which includes a number of safeguards required during interrogations. These include the contemporaneous recording of all interrogations with suspects, the right to legal assistance during detention and interrogation, and the provision of an appropriate adult for juveniles and for vulnerable adults. Furthermore, section 76 of PACE requires that for confessions to be admissible in court, they must be voluntary and not the result of coercion and/ or oppression. From analysis of interrogations post-PACE, however, it was found that a manipulative form of interrogation had been replaced by a confrontational form in which the police would accuse suspects of having committed an offence at the start of the interrogation and ask for their response to such accusations. In response to this practice the new ‘PEACE’ model of interrogation, which arose out of a collaborative effort between the police and psychologists in England and Wales, was adopted by the police in the early 1990s.
The assumption underlying the PEACE model is that a suspect who is relaxed, and with whom the interrogator has a rapport, is more likely to cooperate by responding to police questions. While the PEACE model was reported to have the desired effect on police interview styles in the 1990s, there has been very little research subsequently into police interrogations with juvenile suspects. The most recent study, conducted by Medford and others was based on interrogations undertaken in 1997. Subsequently in 2002 a performance target was introduced which required the police to increase the number of detections.
Chapter 8 - Integrated Analysis
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- By Michele Panzavolta, University of Leuven, Dorris de Vocht, Maastricht University, Jackie Hodgson, Vicky Kemp, University of Nottingham, Miet Vanderhallen, Maastricht University, Marc van Oosterhout, Maastricht University
- Edited by Miet Vanderhallen, Marc Van Oosterhout, Michele Panzavolta, Dorris de Vocht
-
- Book:
- Interrogating Young Suspects II
- Published by:
- Intersentia
- Published online:
- 21 September 2018
- Print publication:
- 04 January 2016, pp 305-384
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
The empirical study carried out in the five jurisdictions aimed to explore the nature of the interrogation of juveniles. Its goal was to examine to what extent the practice lives up to the existing legal frameworks, and, where possible, highlight good practices in the protection of the juvenile suspect during interrogation.
Merging the national findings of the empirical studies was indeed a difficult endeavour, not only for methodological reasons. The national experiences proved to be significantly different from one another, as they are inevitably affected by the surrounding legal framework and culture of each system. Nonetheless it was possible to highlight some recurrent themes in all the countries. In this respect it is important to observe from the outset that there is at times significant convergence in the experiences and opinions of the same group of respondents participating in the focus group interviews. The common function performed by the interviewees (or, in the cases of juveniles, the common experience of coming into contact with the criminal justice system) gives rise to experiences that are sufficiently similar to be compared across countries. The present chapter is intended to offer a comparative transversal overview of these different experiences and, insofar as possible, to combine the national findings into an integrated perspective.
The combined analysis also required that the empirical findings be tested against the underlying legal framework. The testing has been done according to a two-tier process: first, the relevant empirical findings have been measured against the national framework. Then, the transversal findings – which are presented in this chapter – have been evaluated in light of the differences/ commonalities between legal systems that had been highlighted during the legal study, presenting an integrated analysis in a legal thematic way. Inevitably, this chapter will summarise this process and only where relevant the empirical findings and the analysis will be discussed in light of the substantive legal findings.
The chapter is structured as follows. First it looks in general at the treatment of juveniles (paragraph 8.2), then it deals with the findings concerning the way in which juveniles are informed of their rights (paragraph 8.3). Next it formulates some reflections on the difficulties concerning the (lack of) assessment of the juvenile's maturity, health and fitness to be interrogated (8.4). The following paragraph (8.5) looks into the topic of assistance, first by a lawyer then by an appropriate adult (hereafter: AA).