Introduction
The significance of testimony in general and the relationship between suggestibility and memory must be understood when debating whether children can give credible eyewitness evidence. The challenges of working with kids in a forensic context, the influence of memory on eyewitness evidence, and the use of in-depth interrogation techniques on children’s eyewitness testimony are all covered in this article. This essay will make the case that, even though numerous factors make children’s testimony less reliable than that of adults, kids should not generally be ignored as witnesses. Although children’s memories are more prone to error than those of adults, raising questions about the veracity of their witness, the supply of proper resources and the regulation of interviewing techniques guarantee that kid testimony has an important position in the justice system.
Factors that Affect Testimony
A person who witnessed a crime or an accident and subsequently testified about it in a felony or civil trial is said to have provided eyewitness testimony. Witnesses are questioned about what they have seen during the particular period under examination. Although it is ideal for testimony to be thorough, it does not always happen. Both adults and kids can recall past events accurately enough to aid a court in rendering a decision. If the evidence is validated, the court may find the offender guilty to deter such crimes in the future. Eyewitnesses can provide necessary evidence in a case, yet human memory is prone to error (Nairne & Coverdale, 2022).
Contrary to common assumption, memory is a three-stage process rather than operating like a recorder. A human acquires data, in this case, seeing an occurrence, during the encoding phase. The interval between the initial and third stages – the retrieval stage – is known as the retention period. The last stage involves an eyewitness recounting the incident and identifying those connected to it (Wu et al., 2022).
As was already discussed, the process of remembering consists of three combined stages. Many circumstances will impact the reliability of the provided evidence at each step. The “aspects of the incident itself, chronic aspects of the witness, and acute aspects of the witness” are only a few of the things that might cause memory distortion during the encoding stage (Wu et al., 2022). This can specifically refer to the duration of the incident, environmental elements like illumination, witness characteristics like age, mental or physical disability, and transient aspects like drunkenness, comprehension, or attentiveness.
The time between stages one and three are crucial during the retention stage. Finally, “knowledge, beliefs, and preconceptions” (which may potentially have an impact on the encoding stage) might have an impact on the retrieval stage (Wu et al., 2022). According to this data, it appears that youngsters will experience more difficulties during those periods than adults will, as they have less self-awareness and a greater need to interpret the information given to them.
The Significance of Children’s Eyewitness Testimony
In CSA cases, testimony from children is sometimes the only available proof. The prosecution frequently lacks adequate tangible evidence and witnesses in these particular cases (Vandiver & Braithwaite, 2022). According to Vandiver & Braithwaite (2022), a child’s statement must contain information that identifies the claimed act or offense and the perpetrator to be judged as truthful and legal. The statement must be detailed enough to specify the place, the time, and other details that will clearly distinguish various offenses to aid the prosecution in charging the offender.
The manner of the interview significantly affects the remarks made. Children execute memory tasks less well than adults because they may lack the language to explain events and are less skilled at explaining what they witnessed (Line et al., 2022). According to Line et al. (2022), who studied the elements influencing children’s testimonies, the environment of the interviews was a key influence on how much information was shared. The kids said that the interviewer’s tone of voice affected their answers. The victim or witness felt uneasy during the interview because of the complexity of the language, interruptions, or the interviewer’s incessant talking.
Children’s testimony is made more trustworthy by adopting a sophisticated interviewing approach. In their 1996 study, Warren and colleagues looked at the relationship between children’s candor during interviews and various interviewing approaches (Macleod et al., 2021). To guarantee that the youngster understood, 56% of all interviews (Macleod et al., 2021) discuss the distinction between a lie and the truth. The efficiency of these talks was further investigated, and it was discovered that there are two main procedures: the basic protocol and the complex protocol.
As part of the standard procedure, the interviewer first asked the kid whether they knew the difference between the two. They then offered a straightforward question, such as, if the child was a boy or a girl (they then answer it if it was truth) and instructed the youngster to only respond honestly throughout the interview. As opposed to the idea of truth, which children thought was too abstract to express, the complex process enabled them to investigate various degrees of falsehoods. The child’s capacity to use judgment was assessed during the interview with several open-ended questions. It was discovered that kids interviewed using the intricate technique provided more compelling evidence. However, there was little difference between using the regular protocol or skipping the discussion of the distinctions between the truth and lies altogether.
Children are prone to failure, yet they may still offer insightful testimony with the proper support. Paine and colleagues studied children under 10’s capacity to create facial composites in 2008 (Hum et al., 2019). The researchers developed new strategies to enhance the interaction between the kid and the composite-maker since they recognized that the youngsters would experience challenges due to word restrictions.
The youngsters were given many variations of the same facial characteristics rather than being vocally told how distinct features varied. They were encouraged to choose the one most closely resembled the face they requested to replicate. The researchers concluded that while younger children were less adept at reconstructing an unfamiliar face than older children, they were nevertheless capable of doing so. Some of their composites were even better than those of adults.
Conclusion
As a result of their susceptibility to suggestion and propensity to accept the interviewer’s wording, children are less trustworthy witnesses than adults. Additionally, unlike a recording, the human memory demands a strong recognition memory divided into three stages. Children are more susceptible to distortion at these phases of development because of their inherent characteristics, like age, and transitory ones, such as not fully comprehending some events.
Children’s minds are flawed during these periods. The capacity to effectively encode and recall information is impacted by stress and anxiety while giving evidence in a forensic context, especially in youngsters. Avoiding following and suggestive questions is vital when interviewing children since they might skew the kid’s memory and reduce its reliability. Instead, use open-ended questions that allow the child to describe the experience in their own words. It is advised to provide the youngster with more tools to communicate themselves throughout the interview as they may be less able to do it verbally. It is crucial to treat youngsters with dignity and conduct the interview in a friendly manner.
References
Hum, F., Jackman, B., Quirico, O., Urbas, G., & Werren, K. (2019). Australian Uniform Evidence Law. Cambridge University Press.
Line, E. N., McCowan, K., Plantz, J. W., & Neal, T. M. S. (2022). Expert witness testimony. Expert Witness Testimony. Web.
Macleod, E., Hobbs, L., Admiraal, A., La Rooy, D., & Patterson, T. (2021). The use and impact of repeated questions in diagnostic child abuse assessment interviews. Psychiatry, Psychology, and Law: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Law, 29(3), 364–380. Web.
Nairne, J. S., & Coverdale, M. E. (2022). Adaptive memory. In Evolution of Learning and Memory Mechanisms. Cambridge University Presspp. 406–423.
Vandiver, D., & Braithwaite, J. (2022). Rape and sexual assault. In Sex Crimes, Routledge, 49–79.
Wu, Y., Grandchamp, J., & Goodman, G. S. (2022). Child maltreatment and eyewitness memory. Routledge.