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“I'd like to support the Center on Wrongful Conviction of Youths on behalf of my family and late grandfather who fought his whole life for the freedom of his home country, Lithuania. Thank you for fighting for freedom for those youths who have had it stolen from them.”

Through outreach, advocacy, education, and litigation, the Center on Wrongful Conviction of Youth (CWCY) seeks to implement policies and practices that will ensure that the evidence used against youth is reliable.

To date, DNA evidence has exonerated hundreds of people of crimes they did not commit. Many of these innocent men and women served decades in prison before they were vindicated. Many more like them await exoneration.

Before 2008, however, no attention had been focused on those people who may be most likely to be wrongfully convicted: children and adolescents. The Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth (CWCY) – a joint project of the Center on Wrongful Convictions and the Children and Family Justice Center – was created to address the unique problems faced by wrongfully accused youth.

Guided by a staff with special expertise in juvenile interrogations, the CWCY is spearheading national efforts to exonerate wrongfully convicted youth and drive criminal justice reforms that will prevent children from making unreliable and coerced statements during police interrogations. "The U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that children and teenagers are different from adults. They're less able to weigh risks and long-term consequences, more easily pressured by authority figures, and more naïve about the way the world works," says CWCY Project Co-Director Laura Nirider. Unfortunately, law enforcement officials don’t always consider these differences when investigating and questioning children. As a result, much of the evidence used to charge and convict children can be unreliable.

Understand the Problem

There can be no doubt about it: Young people are simply more likely to be wrongfully convicted than adults. There are many reasons for this, many of which are rooted in the special developmental vulnerabilities of children. Children and teenagers are categorically more suggestible, compliant, and vulnerable to outside pressures than adults. They are less able to weigh risks and consequences; less likely to understand their legal rights; and less likely to understand what attorneys do or how attorneys can help them. The CWCY is aimed at helping wrongfully convicted kids and remedying the root causes of wrongful convictions of youth, with a special focus on the following issues:

False Confessions

False confessions are one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions, accounting for roughly 25% of all convictions that were later overturned based on DNA evidence. Indeed, as the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged in 2009, "There is mounting empirical evidence that these pressures [associated with custodial police interrogation] can induce a frighteningly high percentage of people to confess to crimes they never committed."

Citing the CWCY’s work, the high court concluded in 2011 that the risk of false confession is "all the more troubling…and all the more acute" when the subject of custodial interrogation is a juvenile. Its conclusion has been backed up by a slew of research.  One leading study of 125 proven false confession cases found that 63% of false confessors were under the age of twenty-five and 32% were under eighteen. Another respected study of 340 exonerations found that juveniles under the age of eighteen were three times as likely to falsely confess as adults. Leading law enforcement organizations, such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police, also agree that children are particularly likely to give false confessions during the pressure-cooker of police interrogation.

False Accusations

The witnesses presented against children are often children themselves. The same interrogation tactics that can cause youthful suspects to falsely confess, however, can also cause youthful witnesses to falsely implicate their peers. Those witnesses may be particularly vulnerable even to unintentional suggestion during police interviews, line-ups, and other eyewitness identification procedures, due to an inherent desire to please authority figures or a simple desire to end the unpleasant experience of being at the police station. The result is that – often at the urging of police – some youth give statements blaming other kids so that they can go home.

Miranda Rights

Time and again, researchers have concluded that most youth – even those who might be considered "street-smart" – simply do not understand their Miranda rights to counsel and to remain silent. Accordingly, these children do not exercise those essential rights and are thus left alone during police interrogation, without the assistance of counsel, a friendly adult, or their parents. Too often, the child's resulting statement is involuntary or unreliable.

In the interrogation room, officers often question children using pressure-filled tactics designed for adults. In most jurisdictions, police are trained to ask children to waive their Miranda rights without ensuring the children understand the rights or their significance; to question children for hours without notifying their parents or an attorney; to interrogate them using guilt-presumptive, leading questions; to falsely tell child suspects that there is evidence against them; and to falsely imply that a confession will result in leniency or even freedom. Because these tactics are used, a recent CWCY study found that youth are twice as likely as adults to falsely confess to crimes they never committed.

Policy Reform Work

The CWCY also advocates for policy reforms that will decrease the likelihood that any child’s life will be disrupted by a wrongful conviction. The Center has built a broad network of like-minded advocates committed to pushing juvenile interrogation reform to the forefront of legislative agendas, testified at legislative hearings, and led informational campaigns to educate policymakers and the public.  Through a combination of litigation and policy strategies, the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth strives to improve the ways in which children are questioned by police – and remains committed to helping wrongfully convicted children across the country.