Globally, many juvenile youth always end up in prisons for the crimes they did not commit. The teens' false confession is always attributed to the high pressure and threats during the interrogations by police that the teens undergo. Some teens are sometimes subjected to torture, physical abuse, threats, and intimidations that make them break and confess doing a crime. Consequently, the teens are also subjected to lies by the police and interrogators on how the criminal justice system will be lenient to them if they confess to their crimes. Psychologically, most teens are most likely to break and confess to a crime they did not commit even when illegally interrogated and without any abuse.
According to Lindsay (2016), what I find interesting about the talk on why teens end up confessing to misconducts they did not commit is the fact that teens are more susceptible than grown-ups to this occurrence. Also, the false confession can convict someone to prison even without the physical evidence needed by the legal system. The underlying false confessions by teens are broken down into a science that needs the legal system to change the way they treat and interrogate teens and juveniles. During the TED talk, Lindsay Malloy, a forensic developmental psychologist, professor, and a new parent, provides information on teens' psychological function when faced with interrogations meant for adults. In the talk, Lindsay gives an incident in March 2006, which involved a police and Brendan Dassey, a 16-year-old student with low intelligence quotient (Lindsay, 2016). The police asked Brendan to be honest with his crime to believe in him because they know what he did, and he would be set free. The part of being honest is the already a lie because the police wanted Brendan to confess his crime (Lindsay, 2016). Later, in 2007 the police got a confession, and Brendan was convicted of life in prison for sexual assault and murder without physical evidence.
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Consequently, the legal systems are more shocking because police use the same tactics used in adults to interrogate teens to get the false or true confessions out. I will likely remember from the talk that the intellectually impaired teens like Brendan receive the same interrogation techniques as other adults under high pressure. This interrogation on teens makes them feel like confession is the only way out, and denial of the crime might lead them to more trouble ( Kassin et al., 2010) . As a developmental psychology professor, the speaker is also a researcher on the social science and humanities program. Lindsay studies the treatment of teens and children in a legal system that is designed to interrogate adults. Therefore, the psychological perspective that I would say best fits the work that she does is the children's cognitive and social development and how it influences their life.
During the teens' interrogations, the police officers use their susceptible social influence to make them confess to crimes they did not commit. Consequently, the police use intense pressures and authoritative suggestions, and through "minimization strategies," the police may show sympathy and understanding on the suspect teens, which makes the teens confess falsely. If I had a conversation with Lindsay Malloy, I would ask her the best method of interrogating teens and the suspected teens when a crime has happened. Considering the legal system uses the saying that someone is ‘innocent until proven guilty’ ( Kassin et al., 2010) . Finally, on why teens confess to crimes they did not commit, I would like to know why the legal system does not educate law enforcement officers, judges, jurors, and attorneys the limits of developmental interrogations of juveniles.
References
Kassin, S. M., Drizin, S. A., Grisso, T., Gudjonsson, G. H., Leo, R. A., & Redlich, A. D. (2010). Police-induced confessions: Risk factors and recommendations. Law and human behavior , 34 (1), 3-38.
Lindsay Malloy, November, 2016. Why teens confess to crimes they did not commit.. https://www.ted.com/talks/lindsay_malloy_why_teens_confess_to_crimes_they_didn_t_commit/transcript
