Introduction 

Miranda warnings were instituted by the Supreme Court in 1966 in order to help protect an individual’s Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer self-incriminating questions.¹ While this constitutional protection extends to juveniles, adolescents are more likely to waive their Miranda rights than adults, with about 90% of youth (vs. about 80% of adults) choosing to waive their rights.^2,3 This discrepancy in Miranda waivers calls into question whether juvenile waivers meet the knowing, intelligent, and voluntary requirements for a valid waiver. 

Developmental neuroscience research has shown that the human brain continues to develop well into adulthood, with neural systems associated with reasoning and self-control being some of the last to mature.⁴ While there is currently not a clear consensus as to what age range defines adolescence, there is little debate that 13- to 17-year-olds are indeed adolescents, experiencing pronounced changes in brain and behavior. It is this same age range that is critical to consider in the context of this brief, as individuals 13–17 are able to waive their Miranda rights (after consulting with parents in many cases, as described below) but likely do not adequately understand their rights. Given the large differences in neural maturity between juveniles and adults, research regarding development of cognitive and emotional faculties such as language comprehension, decision-making, and social sensitivities may shed light on whether current Miranda practices are fully protecting our youth. 

1. Adolescents may not fully understand the Miranda warning and their legal rights. 

Language comprehension, both generally and as it pertains to legal terminology, continues to develop through adolescence. Due to the typical development of language comprehension, many adolescents cannot understand the conceptual content of the Miranda warning. Difficulty comprehending the Miranda warning is especially problematic for adolescents in custody who tend to have lower IQs or lower reading levels.^5,6 

Developmental differences in comprehending the Miranda warning influence the ability to decide whether or not to waive one’s rights. 

• The ability to comprehend one’s Miranda rights increases with age. The general ability to comprehend abstract texts and maintain information in mind continues to develop throughout adolescence.^7,8 Specifically, between adolescence and young adulthood, the ability to extract relevant meaning from more abstract texts improves significantly. This poses a challenge for juveniles in custody who are read their Miranda rights, an abstract and complex piece of text. Research has demonstrated that juveniles do, in fact, struggle to comprehend the Miranda warning. In one study, researchers asked 13- to 18- year-old boys to explain the meaning of sentences from the standard Miranda warning. The study found that even after controlling for IQ, age signifi cantly predicted Miranda Rights comprehen sion, with younger adolescents struggling to understand their rights and demonstrating worse comprehension than older adolescents.⁹ How ever, even older adolescents do not fully understand their rights when read the Miranda warning. In one study, more than 80 percent of juveniles tested on their comprehension of the Miranda warning exhibited 10 or more erroneous beliefs regarding their rights, with even the individuals categorized as “high maturity” failing to accurately recall almost half of the content they were read.¹⁰ 

• Over 100 versions of the child Miranda warnings have been developed, but the inherent complexity of the warning limits their comprehensibility. Research suggests that the current “child friendly” versions of the Miranda warning do not effectively adjust the level of difficulty to account for adolescents’ comprehension capabilities. Even when tested on comprehension of a simplified, juvenile version of the Miranda warning used by police in California, 81 out of 90 juveniles did not under stand their rights.¹¹ Furthermore, there is no standard version of the child Miranda warning: One study investigated 122 versions of juvenile Miranda warnings used across the country and found that they varied dramatically in their length, reading level, and content.¹² These studies, which have investigated modified versions of the warning, suggest that the concept of the warning itself may be too challenging to effectively communicate to adolescents through a brief, verbal warning. 

• Comprehension difficulties are even more pronounced in individuals in custody, who often score lower on measures of general intelligence and language comprehension. Youth in custody generally exhibit lower general intelligence and greater incidence of learning disabilities than non-delinquents their age.^5,6,13 This suggests that the population in question — those who are likely to be read the Miranda warning — have even greater difficulty understanding the warning than their peers.⁵ 

Poorer comprehension of Miranda Rights predicts the likelihood of unknowingly waiving one’s rights or offering false confessions. 

• Misinterpretation of the Miranda warning can lead adolescents to unknowingly waive their rights. In one study, more than 95 per cent of juveniles chose to waive their rights, but of these, fewer than 6 percent fully understood the Miranda warning.¹¹ Additionally, juveniles who understood their rights are more likely to assert them. For example, among adolescents who asserted their rights, 84 percent of them demonstrated adequate comprehension of them. However, among adolescents who waived their rights, only around 25 percent of them understood the warning.¹⁴ 

• Difficulty comprehending the Miranda warning is linked to the likelihood of offering a false confession. Researchers have found that differences in comprehension had additional consequences beyond invalidly waiving one’s rights — adolescents who demonstrated poorer comprehension of their Miranda rights were more likely to report that they would offer false confessions.⁹ Similarly, McLachlan, Roesch, and Douglas¹⁵ found that adolescents who misunderstood their rights were more influenced by leading questions used by officers during interrogation, regardless of previous experience with law Considering that adolescents are more likely than adults to offer false confessions in simulated laboratory settings¹⁶ and that younger individuals more often misinterpret the Miranda warning, these studies demonstrate that adolescents are highly susceptible to offering false confessions as a result of their youth and failure to comprehend the Miranda warning. 

• When people falsely confess to crimes, they are more likely to be convicted and given harsher verdicts, even if the confession is later deemed to be coerced and there is no evidence that the defendant committed the crime.³ False confessions are particularly problematic for an innocent teen who feels he has nothing to hide by speaking openly with a police officer.¹⁷ 

2. Adolescents often make impulsive decisions, particularly in emotional situations. 

Adolescents prioritize immediate over long term consequences of their choices. 

The decision to invoke or waive Miranda rights can have ramifications on later case outcomes (e.g., due to false confessions during interrogation). Such legal outcomes occur months, and sometimes years, following the initial Miranda decision, so the ability to understand and prioritize future outcomes is crucial for making a choice about Miranda rights. Adoles cents’ bias towards prioritizing immediate over fu ture outcomes may cause them to take action (e.g. waiving their rights and falsely confessing) to escape custody without adequately considering the more distant consequences of this choice. 

• The ability to think about long-term goals continues to develop in adolescence, and may be supported by neural changes in the prefrontal cortex. Cognitive neuroscience re search suggests that as the prefrontal cortex develops¹⁸ (Figure 1), connections between the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain also strengthen from childhood to adult hood. During this process, individuals demonstrate improvements in the ability to reason abstractly.^19,20 Additionally, relative to adults, adolescents are less likely to consider tempo rally abstract events. For example, adults out perform adolescents on tasks of prospective memory in which individuals are told to re member information that will be needed in the future.²¹ These results indicate that adoles cents may not as readily imagine themselves encountering future scenarios that are likely to occur. The ability to think critically about relationships between abstract or novel events may be particularly important when individu als are faced with decisions with consequences for the future, like the decision to waive one’s Miranda rights. 

• Developmental differences in the ability to think about future events may lead adolescents to prioritize immediate rewards when making decisions. The fact that adolescents demonstrate reduced future-oriented thinking relative to adults has functional consequences for decision-making. Specifically, in experimental tasks in which participants must choose be tween an immediate small reward and a larger reward later (e.g., receive $5 now or $50 in a month) adolescents are more likely to choose the smaller reward sooner, foregoing the larger reward that they would need to wait for.²² Individuals’ preferences for the immediate reward relate to their scores on surveys that measure future-oriented thinking — those who are less likely to consider future consequences are more likely to prioritize immediate outcomes when making decisions.²³ In the case of an adolescent in custody, the tendency to prioritize immediate reward rather than considering long term consequences could cause an adolescent to offer a confession in order to receive positive feedback from a law enforcement agent or to stop the interrogation, rather than considering the longer-term benefits of remaining silent. 

• Age differences in decision-making likely emerge due to the normative, protracted development of their underlying neural circuitry. Specifically, connections between the prefrontal cortex and the striatal circuitry that underlies reward processing continue to develop into late adolescence and early adulthood.²² Additionally, these developmental differences in decision-making are largely the same across cultures. Studies examining over 5000 individuals ages 10 to 30 in eleven economically and culturally diverse countries have shown that adolescence is a time of heightened impulsive decision making, suggesting that decision making without regard for future consequences is a common characteristic of this stage of development.^24,25 

Adolescents often make poor decisions in emotional situations. 

While adolescents are often capable of making in formed decisions when given sufficient time and in formation, decision making often breaks down in the heat of the moment, particularly in emotionally charged situations.⁴ The events leading up to and including being in police custody likely involve heightened emotions, which may influence an adolescent’s decision on whether to waive their rights. 

• Adolescents are particularly sensitive to emotional inputs from the environment. Relative to both children and adults, adolescents show a greater sensitivity to emotional information. Converging evidence from developmental studies of both humans and animals suggest that dynamic changes in neural circuitry during adolescence occur alongside this increase in emotional reactivity.²⁶ Adolescents have been shown to react more impulsively than adults in response to both positive²⁷ and negative emotional cues,^28,29 including cues that signal potential threats. Impulsivity to positive cues is paralleled by increased brain activity in a reward center of the brain, the ventral striatum²⁷ (Figure 2), while impulsiv ity to cues of potential threat is paralleled by increased brain activity in cortical brain areas implicated in processing emotions.²⁹ Taken together, these studies suggest that adolescents demonstrate increased reactivity in response to emotions. 

• Emotional situations impair adolescent decision making. Adolescents’ choices have been shown to be particularly different from adult decision making under emotionally arousing as compared to neutral conditions.³⁰ Furthermore, a recent study showed that adolescents’ performance on an emotional task, but not a non emotional task, predicted greater risk-taking in a task that required them to make quick decisions.³¹ Adolescents have also been shown to perform similarly in low- and high-stakes conditions, while young adults show better performance under high stakes. Increases in connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and striatum were associated with better performance in high-stakes conditions,³² suggesting that continued maturation of neural circuits involved in decision making and emotion may lead to poor decisions in certain emotional situation during adolescence. 

• Interactions with authority figures can affect the way an adolescent may act in a high stakes situation. A study of over 4000 adolescents’ recent self-reported communication experiences found that bad communication was most prevalent when adolescents interacted with adults outside their family.³³ In a follow-up study, adolescents expressed that many communication problems resulted from power imbalances between themselves and the adult figure.³⁴ These power dynamics are likely prevalent in interrogation scenarios when adolescents are questioned by law enforcement officials. Researchers have found that the power imbalance present during police interrogation can sway adolescents toward compliance with police requests. In one laboratory study, young people under age 16 – both incarcerated and non-incarcerated – were more likely than young adults (ages 18–24) to accept plea agreements and confess in response to vignettes involving requests from police officers.⁵ 

3. Parent presence is not sufficient protection for youth. 

Because adolescents may have difficulty making a Miranda decision, police in New York must attempt to contact a parent to consult with their child in making this choice (although if an attempt is made and the parents are not reachable, the child may still waive his or her own rights without consulting a parent). However, parents may be unable to make an informed decision about Miranda rights due to a lack of knowledge or situational factors. 

• Parents are susceptible to police coercion when present in the interrogation room on behalf of their child. Police are trained to marginalize parents during an interrogation if they are present. They encourage parents to believe they are not acting in their child’s best interest. In turn, they may push children to waive their own rights and talk to the police themselves.³⁵ In this way, adolescents may still need to understand complex scenarios and make temporally abstract decisions on their own behalf, even if their parents or guardians are present. 

• Lack of legal knowledge as well as the emotionally charged context may prevent parents from making the best decisions for their child. While parents may be better able to understand the Miranda rights than their children, they are not necessarily well-versed in police practices or other legal protections, or possess the knowledge to effectively advocate on behalf of their child.³⁶ In stressful and emotionally charged situations in particular, parents may also struggle to make rational, future-oriented decisions on behalf of their children.^36,37 Currently, no resources are pro vided to parents to help them make these difficult decision on behalf of their children.³⁷ 

• The nature of the parent-child relationship presents conflicts of interest that may affect the interrogation process. During adolescence, parent-child relationships increase in conflict and decrease in warmth,^38–40 meaning that adolescents and their parents’ views on the best outcome of an interrogation process may differ. Furthermore, when deciding whether to waive their child’s Miranda rights, parents must decide what role they would like to play to their child in these situations; it is difficult to know if they should play the role of educator and moral guardian, or legal protector.⁴¹ Parents’ decision making processes may also be influenced by the immediate and long-term consequences their advice might have on their relationship with their child.⁴² They may additionally consider factors beyond their child’s well-being in these decisions, such as the well being of their other family members, or personal considerations.^35,41 

Because parents’ interests may not be fully aligned with those of their children, they are not an appropriate resource for consulting in a Miranda waiver decision. An alternative possibility is for teens to make their own Miranda waiver decisions, but under the guidance of an attorney, outside of the emotionally charged context of the arrest. Such a policy would result in Miranda decisions that are in the best in terest of the child, with insight from an expert with experience in the justice system. 

4. Conclusion 

The literature summarized above demonstrates adolescents’ relative lower comprehension of Miranda warnings, difficulty imagining the future and prioritizing long-term outcomes and heightened propensity to make impulsive decisions. These factors, which are facets of healthy adolescent brain development, likely preclude most adolescent waivers from meeting the knowing, intelligent and voluntary requirements for a valid Miranda waiver. Further, the current protections that are in place, are insufficient to promote just outcomes for juveniles in custody. 

• Knowing. Waivers intended for juveniles are written in language that averages around a 7th grade reading level.⁴³ However, juvenile delinquents tend to score substantially lower on general intelligence tests^5,6 and exhibit higher rates of intellectual disabilities than their non delinquent peers.⁴⁴ Because age predicts comprehension of Miranda⁹it is unlikely that an adolescent in custody will be able to understand the warning to sufficiently provide a knowing waiver. 

• Intelligent. Given their relative difficulty imagining the future,^19,21 it is unlikely that juveniles making Miranda decisions are able to under stand and appreciate the future consequences of a Miranda waiver. Similarly important to imagining future outcomes is the necessity to prioritize those future outcomes in rendering a Miranda decision. Adolescents’ increased prioritization of present outcomes (e.g. the desire to return home) over future outcomes (e.g., court outcomes^22,45), paired with their heightened sensitivity to the rewards inherent in present outcomes,⁴⁶ especially in emotional contexts,^26,27 likely increase adolescents’ tendency to waive their rights. Further, adolescents in custody may already be more prone to risk taking (as risky decision-making often contributes to criminal activity), increasing the likelihood of these contextual factors playing a role in Miranda decisions. 

• Voluntary. The clear power dynamic between an adolescent in custody and an adult interrogator, and social norms favoring compliance with authority⁴⁷ calls into question the voluntariness of a juvenile’s waiver.⁴¹ Further, because adolescents may have difficulty communicating with adults in high-pressure situations,^33,34 a waiver may be misinterpreted by an adult, or a desire to stop interrogation may not be perceived by an the interrogator. 

The current standard practice in New York (to rely on parent input to make a Miranda decision) is not in the best interest of the adolescent or the parent. 

Parents are also susceptible to coercion when their children are in custody, and also may encourage their children to “tell the truth” to police.³⁵ Further, parents may not have adequate knowledge of the legal system to council their child on the costs and benefits of waiving their rights.³⁶ Finally, a parent may have additional conflicts precluding them from making a decision in the best interest of the child.⁴¹ 

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Protecting Our Youth: Why Current Miranda Practices Fail to Adequately Protect Adolescents

Introduction

Established in 1966, Miranda warnings safeguard an individual's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. However, despite this protection extending to juveniles, adolescents are significantly more likely to waive their Miranda rights compared to adults (approximately 90% vs. 80%). This disparity raises concerns about whether juvenile waivers genuinely fulfill the legal criteria of being knowing, intelligent, and voluntary.

Developmental neuroscience highlights the ongoing maturation of the human brain into adulthood, with reasoning and self-control systems maturing last. While the precise age range defining adolescence remains debated, individuals aged 13-17 undoubtedly fall within this category, undergoing significant neurological and behavioral shifts. This age group forms the crux of this analysis, as they possess the legal capacity to waive Miranda rights (often with parental consultation) but may lack the cognitive maturity for informed consent. Given the substantial neurodevelopmental differences between adolescents and adults, research examining cognitive and emotional development in areas like language comprehension, decision-making, and social cognition can illuminate whether current Miranda practices effectively protect juveniles.

1 Adolescents may not fully comprehend the Miranda warning and their legal rights.

Adolescents experience continuous development in language comprehension, including the understanding of legal terminology. Consequently, many struggle to grasp the conceptual meaning of Miranda warnings. This difficulty is particularly problematic for adolescents in custody who often exhibit lower IQs or reading levels.

Developmental disparities in comprehending Miranda warnings impact the ability to make informed waiver decisions.

• Comprehension of Miranda rights improves with age. The capacity to understand abstract text and retain information undergoes development throughout adolescence. Notably, the ability to extract meaning from complex texts significantly advances between adolescence and young adulthood. This poses a challenge for juveniles in custody presented with the abstract and intricate language of Miranda warnings. Research indeed confirms that juveniles struggle with Miranda comprehension. One study involving 13- to 18-year-old boys revealed that age significantly predicted Miranda Rights comprehension even after controlling for IQ, with younger adolescents demonstrating poorer understanding than their older counterparts. However, even older adolescents exhibit incomplete understanding. In another study, over 80% of juveniles tested on Miranda comprehension displayed ten or more erroneous beliefs about their rights, with even "high maturity" individuals misremembering nearly half the content.

• Despite over 100 versions of child Miranda warnings, their inherent complexity hinders comprehension. Studies suggest that existing "child-friendly" versions fail to adequately adjust for adolescent comprehension capabilities. Even with a simplified juvenile version, 81% of 90 juveniles tested did not fully understand their rights. Furthermore, the lack of a standardized child Miranda warning exacerbates the issue. Research analyzing 122 versions used across the US found significant variations in length, reading level, and content. These findings suggest that communicating the complexities of Miranda warnings through brief, verbal delivery may be inherently challenging for adolescents, regardless of modifications.

• Comprehension difficulties are amplified in individuals in custody who often score lower on intelligence and language assessments. Youth in custody generally exhibit lower general intelligence and higher rates of learning disabilities compared to non-delinquent peers. This suggests that the very population subject to Miranda warnings may face even greater challenges in comprehension compared to their age-matched counterparts.

Poorer Miranda comprehension predicts the likelihood of unknowing rights waivers or false confessions.

• Misinterpreting Miranda warnings can lead to unknowing rights waivers. One study found that while over 95% of juveniles waived their rights, less than 6% fully comprehended the Miranda warning. Additionally, juveniles who understand their rights are more likely to assert them. For instance, 84% of adolescents who asserted their rights demonstrated adequate comprehension, whereas only 25% of those who waived their rights understood the warning.

• Difficulty grasping Miranda warnings correlates with false confession susceptibility. Research reveals that comprehension difficulties extend beyond invalid waivers. Adolescents with poorer Miranda comprehension were more likely to report willingness to provide false confessions. Other studies have found that adolescents misunderstanding their rights were more susceptible to leading questions during interrogation, regardless of prior legal experiences. Considering adolescents' increased likelihood of offering false confessions in simulated settings and their higher susceptibility to Miranda misinterpretations, these findings highlight their vulnerability to providing false confessions due to developmental factors and inadequate comprehension.

• False confessions increase the likelihood of convictions and harsher sentences, even if later proven coerced and lacking evidentiary support. This poses a significant risk for innocent adolescents who, feeling they have nothing to hide, may readily confess during police interrogations.

2 Adolescents often exhibit impulsive decision-making, particularly in emotionally charged situations.

Adolescents prioritize immediate over long-term consequences.

The Miranda invocation/waiver decision carries long-term implications for case outcomes, including potential false confessions during interrogation. These legal ramifications often manifest months or years later, demanding the ability to grasp and prioritize future consequences. Adolescents' proclivity for prioritizing immediate over future outcomes may lead them to waive their rights or confess to escape custody without fully considering the long-term ramifications.

• The capacity for long-term thinking develops gradually during adolescence, potentially driven by prefrontal cortex maturation. Cognitive neuroscience suggests that as the prefrontal cortex develops, connections with other brain regions strengthen, enhancing abstract reasoning abilities from childhood to adulthood. Compared to adults, adolescents demonstrate reduced consideration for temporally distant events. For example, adults outperform adolescents on prospective memory tasks requiring remembering information for future use. This suggests that adolescents may struggle to envision future scenarios relevant to their current decisions. This ability to critically analyze relationships between abstract or novel events is particularly crucial when facing decisions with future consequences, such as Miranda waivers.

• Developmental differences in future-oriented thinking may contribute to adolescents' preference for immediate rewards in decision-making. Adolescents' reduced future-oriented thinking has tangible consequences. In experimental tasks involving choices between immediate smaller rewards and delayed larger rewards (e.g., $5 now vs. $50 in a month), adolescents are more likely to choose the immediate reward.22 This preference correlates with scores on future-oriented thinking surveys, indicating that individuals less focused on future consequences prioritize immediate outcomes in decision-making. In custodial settings, this tendency could lead adolescents to confess for immediate positive reinforcement or to end the interrogation, without fully weighing the long-term benefits of remaining silent.

• Age-related decision-making differences likely stem from the normative, protracted development of underlying neural circuitry. Specifically, connections between the prefrontal cortex and the striatum, involved in reward processing, continue maturing into late adolescence and early adulthood. These developmental patterns appear consistent across cultures. Studies involving over 5,000 individuals aged 10-30 from eleven diverse countries demonstrate that adolescence is marked by heightened impulsive decision-making, suggesting that this disregard for future consequences is a common developmental characteristic.

Adolescents often make suboptimal decisions in emotional situations.

While capable of informed decision-making with sufficient time and information, adolescents' decision-making often falters under pressure, especially in emotionally charged situations. The events leading up to and including police custody are inherently stressful, potentially influencing their Miranda decisions.

• Adolescents exhibit heightened sensitivity to emotional inputs. Compared to children and adults, adolescents display greater sensitivity to emotional information. Converging evidence from human and animal studies suggests that this heightened emotional reactivity coincides with dynamic neural circuitry changes during adolescence. Adolescents react more impulsively than adults to both positive and negative emotional cues, including those signaling potential threats. This impulsivity to positive cues corresponds with increased activity in the ventral striatum, a reward center while impulsivity to threat cues relates to heightened activity in cortical areas involved in emotion processing. These findings collectively suggest adolescents' increased reactivity to emotions.

• Emotional situations impair adolescent decision-making. Adolescent choices diverge significantly from adults' under emotionally arousing conditions. One study showed that adolescents' performance on an emotional task, but not a neutral task, predicted greater risk-taking in a task requiring rapid decisions. Adolescents also perform similarly in low- and high-stakes situations, unlike young adults who perform better under high stakes. Increased prefrontal cortex-striatum connectivity correlated with improved high-stakes performance, suggesting that continued maturation of decision-making and emotion-related circuits may contribute to adolescents' poor decisions in emotionally charged situations.

• Interactions with authority figures can influence adolescent behavior in high-stakes scenarios. A study involving over 4,000 adolescents revealed that poor communication was most prevalent during interactions with non-familial adults. Follow-up research indicated that adolescents perceived these communication problems as stemming from power imbalances with adults. Such power dynamics are inherent in interrogation settings involving law enforcement officials. Researchers found that this power imbalance can influence adolescents toward compliance with police requests. In a laboratory setting, individuals under 16, both incarcerated and not, were more likely than young adults (18-24) to accept plea bargains and confess in response to vignettes involving police requests.

3. Parental presence does not guarantee adequate protection for youth.

Recognizing potential decision-making challenges, New York law enforcement must attempt to contact a parent for consultation regarding Miranda rights. However, even if unsuccessful, the adolescent can still waive their rights. Unfortunately, parents may be ill-equipped to make informed Miranda decisions due to lack of knowledge or situational factors.

• Parents are susceptible to police coercion during interrogations. Law enforcement officials are trained to marginalize parents present during interrogations, leading them to question their own judgment and potentially pressuring their children to waive their rights and cooperate. Therefore, adolescents may still face complex decisions and abstract reasoning demands, even with parental presence.

• Limited legal knowledge and the emotionally charged context can hinder parents' ability to make optimal decisions for their children. While parents may grasp Miranda rights better than their children, they are not necessarily well-versed in legal complexities or equipped to advocate effectively.36 Stressful and emotionally charged situations further impede rational, future-oriented decision-making, even for adults. Currently, parents lack adequate resources and support to navigate these difficult decisions.

• The parent-child relationship presents inherent conflicts of interest that can impact the interrogation process. Adolescence is marked by increased parent-child conflict and decreased warmth, potentially leading to differing views on the desired outcome of an interrogation. When deciding on Miranda waivers, parents grapple with their role as educators, moral guardians, and legal protectors. Their decision-making is influenced by potential immediate and long-term consequences for their relationship with their child. They may also prioritize factors beyond the child's well-being, such as other family members or personal considerations.

Given these inherent conflicts of interest, parental involvement may not always serve the child's best interests. An alternative approach could involve adolescent-led Miranda decisions under the guidance of legal counsel, outside the stressful environment of arrest. This would promote decisions aligned with the child's best interests, informed by legal expertise.

4 Conclusion

The research presented highlights adolescents' challenges in comprehending Miranda warnings, their difficulties with future-oriented thinking and prioritizing long-term outcomes, and their heightened impulsivity. These factors, while part of normal adolescent development, raise significant concerns about the validity of their Miranda waivers, as they may not meet the knowing, intelligent, and voluntary criteria. Furthermore, existing protections prove insufficient in ensuring just outcomes for juveniles in custody.

• Knowing. Juvenile Miranda waivers are typically written at a 7th-grade reading level. However, juvenile delinquents often score significantly lower on intelligence tests and exhibit higher rates of intellectual disabilities compared to their non-delinquent peers. Given the correlation between age and Miranda comprehension,9 ensuring genuine understanding for an informed waiver from an adolescent in custody becomes challenging.

• Intelligent. Considering their underdeveloped capacity for future-oriented thinking, adolescents may struggle to fully grasp the long-term consequences of waiving their Miranda rights. Their inclination to prioritize immediate rewards (e.g., returning home) over future implications (e.g., court proceedings) coupled with heightened sensitivity to immediate rewards, particularly in emotional contexts, likely increases their tendency to waive their rights. Additionally, adolescents in custody may be predisposed to risk-taking, a factor potentially influencing their Miranda decisions.

• Voluntary. The inherent power imbalance between an adolescent in custody and an adult interrogator, coupled with societal norms favoring obedience to authority, raises concerns about the voluntariness of juvenile waivers. Furthermore, adolescents' communication difficulties with adults in high-pressure situations increase the risk of misinterpretations and miscommunication of their wishes.

Relying solely on parental input for Miranda decisions, the current standard practice in New York, does not adequately serve the best interests of either the adolescent or the parent.

Parents are not immune to coercion when their children are in custody and may even inadvertently pressure their children to confess. Moreover, they may lack the legal expertise to effectively advise their children on the implications of waiving their rights. Finally, inherent conflicts of interest within the parent-child relationship can further complicate their ability to make decisions solely in their child's best interest.

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Protecting Our Youth: Why Current Miranda Practices Fail Adolescents

Introduction

The Supreme Court established Miranda warnings in 1966 to safeguard the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. This protection extends to juveniles, but adolescents are much more likely to waive these rights compared to adults, with approximately 90% of youth doing so versus 80% of adults. This difference raises serious concerns about whether juvenile waivers truly meet the legal standard of being "knowing, intelligent, and voluntary."

Developmental neuroscience research reveals ongoing brain development well into adulthood, particularly in areas related to reasoning and self-control. While the exact age range defining adolescence is debated, there's no question that 13-to-17-year-olds undergo significant brain and behavioral changes. This age group, allowed to waive Miranda rights (often with parental consultation, as discussed later), likely lacks a full understanding of these rights. Considering the vast neural differences between juveniles and adults, research on cognitive and emotional development, including language comprehension, decision-making, and social sensitivities, can illuminate the shortcomings of current Miranda practices in protecting our youth.

1. Adolescents May Not Fully Grasp Miranda Warnings and Legal Rights

Language comprehension, including legal terminology, continues to develop throughout adolescence. This makes it difficult for many adolescents to grasp the complex concepts within Miranda warnings. Difficulty understanding these warnings is especially problematic for adolescents in custody, who often have lower IQs or reading levels.

Developmental Differences in Comprehension Hinder Informed Waiver Decisions

• Miranda Rights Comprehension Improves with Age: Comprehending abstract text and retaining information are skills that improve throughout adolescence. Specifically, the ability to extract meaning from complex texts sees significant development between adolescence and young adulthood. This poses a challenge for juveniles in custody who must process the abstract and intricate language of Miranda warnings. Research confirms that juveniles struggle with this: a study asking 13-to-18-year-old boys to explain sentences from standard Miranda warnings found that age, even after controlling for IQ, significantly predicted comprehension. Younger adolescents struggled the most. However, even older adolescents don't fully comprehend their rights. In another study, over 80% of juveniles tested displayed ten or more misunderstandings about their rights, with even "high maturity" individuals failing to recall nearly half the information.

• Child-Friendly Miranda Warnings Fall Short: Despite over 100 variations existing, the inherent complexity of Miranda warnings limits their effectiveness, even in simplified versions. A study on a juvenile version used by California police found that 81 out of 90 juveniles still failed to understand their rights. The lack of a standardized version further compounds the issue, as length, reading level, and content vary dramatically. These findings suggest that conveying the core concepts of Miranda warnings to adolescents through a short verbal statement might be inherently flawed.

• Comprehension Deficits Are Magnified in Custody: Youth in custody often exhibit lower general intelligence and higher rates of learning disabilities compared to their non-delinquent peers, suggesting that the very population encountering Miranda warnings faces even greater challenges in understanding them.

Poor Comprehension Increases the Risk of Unknowingly Waiving Rights and False Confessions

• Misunderstanding Leads to Unknowing Waivers: One study found that while over 95% of juveniles waived their rights, less than 6% fully understood them. Understanding is strongly correlated with asserting rights: 84% of adolescents who asserted their rights demonstrated adequate comprehension, compared to only 25% of those who waived them.

• Comprehension Issues Linked to False Confessions: Beyond invalid waivers, poor comprehension is linked to a higher likelihood of false confessions. Adolescents with weaker understanding were more likely to say they'd offer false confessions. Similarly, a study found that misunderstood rights made adolescents more susceptible to leading questions during interrogation, regardless of prior experience with law enforcement. Since adolescents are already more likely than adults to offer false confessions in simulated settings, and younger individuals often misinterpret Miranda warnings, these studies highlight the heightened risk adolescents face.

• False Confessions Lead to Harsher Outcomes: False confessions dramatically increase the chance of conviction and harsher sentences, even if later proven coerced or lacking evidence. This is particularly alarming for innocent teens who believe cooperating fully with police is harmless.

2. Adolescent Impulsivity: Prioritizing Immediate Over Long-Term Consequences

Decisions about Miranda rights can have long-lasting impacts on legal outcomes, including those stemming from false confessions. These consequences often manifest months or years later, requiring a strong ability to understand and prioritize future outcomes. Adolescents' tendency to prioritize immediate over future consequences might lead them to waive their rights and even confess falsely as a way to escape custody quickly, without fully grasping the potential long-term ramifications.

• Developing Foresight: Neural Changes in the Prefrontal Cortex: Cognitive neuroscience research links the development of the prefrontal cortex with improved connections to other brain regions, leading to enhanced abstract reasoning throughout adolescence. Compared to adults, adolescents are less likely to consider temporally distant events, performing worse in tasks requiring them to remember future information. This suggests adolescents may struggle to envision themselves in future situations, a crucial skill when facing decisions with long-term consequences like Miranda waivers.

• Prioritizing Immediate Rewards Over Future Gains: Adolescents' reduced future-oriented thinking impacts their decision-making. In experiments where participants choose between immediate small rewards and larger delayed rewards, adolescents are more likely to opt for the smaller immediate reward. This preference for immediate gratification correlates with their lower scores on future-oriented thinking assessments. In the context of custody, this might lead an adolescent to confess to receive immediate positive reinforcement or end the interrogation, failing to consider the potential long-term benefits of silence.

• Neural Basis for Decision-Making Differences: These age-related decision-making patterns are likely due to the ongoing development of neural circuits connecting the prefrontal cortex and the striatum (involved in reward processing). This developmental trajectory appears consistent across cultures, suggesting that prioritizing immediate gratification over future consequences is a common characteristic of adolescence.

Adolescents Struggle with Decisions in Emotionally Charged Situations

While adolescents can make informed decisions with sufficient time and information, emotionally charged situations often disrupt this ability. The circumstances leading up to and including police custody are inherently stressful, potentially influencing an adolescent's Miranda rights decision.

• Heightened Emotional Sensitivity: Adolescents display greater sensitivity to emotional information than both children and adults. This increased reactivity is thought to be linked to dynamic changes in neural circuitry during this developmental period. Studies show adolescents reacting more impulsively to both positive and negative emotional cues, including threats, compared to adults. This impulsivity corresponds with increased activity in brain regions associated with reward processing (ventral striatum) and emotion processing (cortical areas), suggesting adolescents experience emotions more intensely.

• Emotional Interference with Decision-Making: Adolescents' decision-making diverges most from adults' in emotionally arousing situations compared to neutral ones. A recent study found that performance on an emotional task, but not a non-emotional one, predicted greater risk-taking in adolescents during a rapid decision-making task. Additionally, adolescents showed similar performance in low- and high-stakes scenarios, while young adults performed better in high-stakes situations. Improved connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and striatum correlated with better high-stakes performance, suggesting that the maturing brain circuits involved in decision-making and emotion regulation might contribute to poor decisions in emotionally charged situations during adolescence.

• Power Dynamics and Authority Figures: Research shows that adolescents experience the most communication difficulties with adults outside their families, often due to perceived power imbalances. These power dynamics are likely amplified during interrogations. Studies have found that such imbalances can significantly influence adolescents, making them more likely to comply with authority figures. For instance, young people under 16 were more prone to accept plea deals and confess in response to police requests in vignette studies, compared to young adults (18-24).

3. Parental Presence Offers Insufficient Protection

Recognizing that adolescents might struggle with Miranda decisions, New York requires police to attempt contacting a parent for consultation. However, even when reachable, parents may lack the knowledge or be influenced by situational factors, hindering their ability to make informed decisions.

• Parental Coercion and Police Tactics: Police are trained to manipulate parents present during interrogations, leading them to believe that supporting their child's silence is detrimental. This pressure can result in parents urging their children to waive their rights and cooperate with police, leaving adolescents to navigate complex scenarios and make impactful decisions under duress, even with their parents present.

• Limited Legal Knowledge and Emotional Stress: While parents might understand Miranda rights better than their children, they often lack expertise in police procedures and legal protections necessary to advocate effectively. Stressful and emotionally charged environments can further impair parents' ability to make rational, future-oriented decisions on their children's behalf. Currently, no resources are provided to parents to navigate these difficult situations.

• Conflicting Interests in the Parent-Child Dynamic: Adolescence is marked by increased parent-child conflict and decreased warmth, potentially leading to differing views on the desired outcome of an interrogation. Parents face the dilemma of balancing their roles as educators, moral guides, and legal protectors when advising on Miranda rights. They also grapple with the immediate and long-term consequences of their advice on their relationship with their child, often considering factors beyond their child's well-being, such as the impact on other family members or personal concerns.

Because parental interests might not fully align with those of their children, relying on them for Miranda waiver decisions is problematic. A more appropriate approach could involve adolescents making their own decisions, but with legal counsel and outside the coercive environment of custody. This would ensure decisions made in the child's best interest, guided by an expert familiar with the justice system.

4. Conclusion: Current Practices Fail to Meet Legal Standards

The research presented highlights adolescents' challenges with Miranda warnings, including: weaker comprehension, difficulty with future-oriented thinking, prioritization of immediate rewards, and susceptibility to impulsive decisions in emotional contexts. These developmental factors, while normal, often prevent adolescent waivers from meeting the "knowing, intelligent, and voluntary" standard required for validity. Current protections fall short of ensuring just outcomes for juveniles in custody.

• Knowing: Juvenile Miranda waivers are typically written at a 7th-grade reading level, but delinquent youth often score significantly lower on intelligence tests and exhibit higher rates of intellectual disabilities. Since age predicts comprehension, many adolescents in custody likely lack the understanding necessary for a knowing waiver.

• Intelligent: Difficulty with future-oriented thinking makes it unlikely that juveniles fully grasp the long-term consequences of waiving their rights. Their tendency to prioritize present over future outcomes, coupled with heightened sensitivity to immediate rewards, particularly in emotional situations, likely increases the likelihood of waiving rights. The inherent risk-taking propensity often associated with delinquency further amplifies these factors' influence on Miranda decisions.

• Voluntary: The power imbalance between an adolescent in custody and an adult interrogator, coupled with social norms favoring obedience to authority, casts doubt on the voluntariness of juvenile waivers. Adolescents' communication difficulties with adults in high-pressure situations create further vulnerability to misinterpretation or an inability to effectively communicate their desire to remain silent.

Reliance on Parental Input Is Inadequate

Relying on parents for Miranda decisions is not in the best interest of adolescents or the parents themselves. Parents are susceptible to police coercion, lack sufficient legal knowledge, and might prioritize factors beyond their child's well-being.

A system that ensures legal counsel for adolescents, allowing them to make informed Miranda decisions outside the pressures of custody, is crucial for protecting their rights and promoting just outcomes within the juvenile justice system.

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Do Teens Really Get to "Plead the Fifth"?

Introduction

The Supreme Court made Miranda warnings them a requirement back in 1966 to protect the Fifth Amendment right to stay silent if someone might incriminate themself. This protection applies to everyone, including teenagers. But here's the thing: teens are way more likely to give up these rights than adults. This makes people wonder if teens really get what these rights mean and if they're giving them up willingly.

Science shows that our brains are still developing into adulthood. The parts responsible for thinking things through and controlling our impulses are some of the last to fully mature. It's generally agreed that people aged 13 to 17 are going through major brain and behavioral changes. This is important because, in many places, 13- to 17-year-olds can give up their Miranda rights, even though they might not fully grasp them. Since there's a big difference between teenage and adult brains, we need to look at how teens develop in areas like understanding language, making decisions, and handling social pressure to see if the current Miranda system is really protecting them.

1. Teens might not fully get the Miranda warning or their legal rights.

Understanding language, especially legal terms, keeps developing throughout adolescence. This makes it tough for many teenagers to understand what the Miranda warning really means. It's even harder for teens in custody who might not be as strong in reading or have lower IQs.

Developmental differences in understanding the Miranda warning affect whether teens waive their rights.

• Getting your Miranda rights clicks better as you age. Understanding complex texts and remembering information gets easier as your brain develops. Between being a teen and a young adult, people get better at figuring out the meaning behind abstract ideas. But the Miranda warning is exactly that – abstract and complex! Studies show that teens struggle to understand it. One study had teenage boys explain the meaning of sentences from the standard warning. Younger teens, even with similar IQs to older teens, had a way harder time understanding their rights. Even older teens didn't fully get it. Another study showed that over 80% of teens who were tested on their understanding of the Miranda warning had 10 or more misconceptions about their rights! Even the smartest kids couldn't remember half of what they were told.

• They've tried making kid-friendly versions of the Miranda warning (over 100!), but it's still really hard to understand. Research shows that these "simplified" versions don't really make it any easier for teens to understand. One study in California used a simplified version, and 81 out of 90 teenagers still didn't understand their rights. Plus, there's no one standard version: A study looked at 122 different versions used across the US and found huge variations in length, reading level, and what they even said! This suggests that explaining Miranda rights in a short, verbal warning, even a simplified one, might just be too much for teens to handle.

• Understanding is even harder for teens in custody, who often have lower IQs and language skills. Young people in custody often struggle more with intelligence and learning disabilities compared to other teens their age. This means the very people who are most likely to hear the Miranda warning are also the ones who have the toughest time understanding it!

Not understanding Miranda rights makes it more likely for teens to give up their rights without knowing or even give false confessions.

• Teens might accidentally give up their rights if they don't understand the warning. In one study, over 95% of teens agreed to waive their rights, but only 6% truly understood what those rights were. When teens did understand their rights, they were more likely to use them. Another study found that 84% of teens who used their rights understood them. But of those who waived their rights, only about 25% actually knew what they were giving up!

• Having a hard time understanding the Miranda warning is linked to false confessions. Researchers found that teens who didn't get the warning were more likely to say they would give a false confession. Another study showed that teens who misunderstood their rights were more swayed by leading questions from officers, regardless of whether they'd been in trouble with the law before. We already know teens are more likely than adults to give false confessions in lab settings and they have a tougher time with Miranda warnings. This means they're really vulnerable to confessing to something they didn't do!

• False confessions can have serious consequences. When people falsely confess, they're more likely to be convicted and get harsher punishments, even if the confession is later thrown out and there's no other evidence. This is a huge problem for innocent teens who might think they have nothing to hide by talking openly with the police.

2. Teens often make impulsive decisions, especially under pressure.

Teens focus on what's happening right now more than future consequences.

Deciding whether to use your Miranda rights can have a big impact on your case later on, especially if you end up giving a false confession. But those legal outcomes are months, even years, down the line. Being able to understand and weigh those future consequences is super important when making a choice about your Miranda rights. But teenagers are wired to focus on what's happening right now. This means they might make a decision (like waiving their rights and confessing) just to get out of custody without thinking about the potential long-term problems.

• Thinking about long-term goals is a skill that develops during the teenage years, and it's linked to changes in the prefrontal cortex. Brain research shows that as the prefrontal cortex matures (that's the part of the brain right behind your forehead), the connections between it and other parts of your brain get stronger. This process helps us get better at abstract thinking. Compared to adults, teenagers are less likely to think about things that might happen way later. For example, adults are better at remembering things they'll need in the future. This suggests that teenagers might not be as good at imagining themselves in future situations. But that's exactly what you need to do when deciding about your Miranda rights: think about what might happen down the line if you waive them.

• Teens' struggle to think about the future can lead them to choose immediate rewards. Because teenagers are less future-oriented, they make different choices. In experiments where people can choose a small reward now or a bigger one later (like $5 now or $50 in a month), teenagers usually go for the quick cash, even if it means losing out on more money later. This tendency is linked to how much they think about future consequences. Those who don't consider the future as much are more likely to go for instant gratification. Think about a teen being interrogated by the police. The desire for an immediate reward (like pleasing the officer or ending the interrogation) might be way stronger than the thought of legal trouble down the line.

• These differences in decision-making are likely due to how our brains develop. The connections between the prefrontal cortex and the area of the brain that deals with rewards continue to develop throughout the late teens and early twenties. Interestingly, these differences in decision-making appear in cultures all over the world. Studies of thousands of young people from ages 10 to 30 across 11 different countries showed that adolescence is a time of increased impulsivity. This means acting without thinking of the consequences seems to be a normal part of being a teenager, no matter where you grow up.

Teens often make poor decisions in emotionally charged situations.

Teenagers can make good decisions when they have time and information. But things fall apart when emotions run high, especially in stressful situations. And let's face it, being arrested and interrogated by the police is definitely stressful! This can have a huge impact on a teen's decision about their Miranda rights.

• Teenagers are super sensitive to emotions. Compared to both kids and adults, teenagers react more strongly to emotional information. Studies show that these changes are happening alongside major rewiring in the teenage brain. For example, teens react more impulsively than adults to both positive and negative emotional cues, like signs of a potential threat. When teens see something positive, a reward center in their brains called the ventral striatum lights up more than in kids or adults. But when they sense a threat, the parts of the brain that handle emotions become more active. Basically, teenagers' emotions are on high alert!

• Stressful situations mess with teens' decision-making. When things get emotional, teenagers make different choices than adults. One study showed that how teens acted during an emotional task (but not a neutral one) predicted how much risk they took when they had to make quick decisions. Plus, teens tend to perform the same in both low-pressure and high-pressure situations, while young adults do better when the stakes are high. Brain scans show that stronger connections between the prefrontal cortex and the striatum (the reward area) are associated with better performance under pressure. This means the parts of the brain responsible for handling decisions and emotions are still developing, which can lead to poor choices in the heat of the moment.

• Interacting with authority figures can make things even more stressful. A study of over 4,000 teenagers found that they had the most communication problems with adults outside their families. They felt these problems were often due to power imbalances - adults having more power than them. That power imbalance is definitely there when a teenager is being questioned by the police. Studies show that this can lead teens to comply with police requests. For instance, in one study, young people under 16 (both in custody and not) were more likely than young adults (18-24 years old) to accept plea deals and confess in scenarios where police officers were asking them to.

3. Having a parent present isn't enough to protect teens.

Because teenagers might struggle with making Miranda decisions, many places require the police to try and get a parent involved. But even if a parent is there, they might not be able to help their kid make an informed choice, either because they don't know enough about the law or because the situation is too stressful.

• Parents can feel pressured by police, too. Police are trained to sideline parents during interrogations. They might try to convince parents that they're not acting in their child's best interest, pushing them to tell their kid to talk to the police. This means even with parents around, teens might still have to navigate a complex situation and make tough decisions on their own.

• Not knowing the law and the intense emotions of the situation can make it hard for parents to make good decisions for their kids. Parents might understand the Miranda warning better than their kids, but they're not necessarily experts on police tactics or legal rights. This makes it hard for them to be effective advocates for their children. Plus, stressful situations can make it hard for anyone, even parents, to think clearly and make rational choices, especially when their kid is involved. Right now, there isn't much support offered to parents to help them make these tough calls.

• The parent-child relationship adds another layer of complexity. As teenagers become more independent, conflicts with parents and tension in the relationship are common. This means parents and teenagers might disagree on the best way to handle a police interrogation. Parents also face a dilemma: should they act as their child's moral guide, their legal protector, or try to be both? They also have to think about how their advice might affect their relationship with their child in the long run. Plus, they might be worried about other things too, like the well-being of other family members or their own personal situation.

Because parents' priorities might not always line up with their children's, they might not be the best people to consult when it comes to waiving Miranda rights. A better solution might be for teenagers to talk to a lawyer – someone who understands the legal system – before making any decisions about their Miranda rights, ideally outside the stressful environment of a police station. This way, teenagers can make informed choices that are truly in their best interest.

4. Conclusion

The research is clear: teenagers don't understand Miranda warnings as well as adults, struggle to think about long-term consequences, and are more likely to make impulsive decisions, especially under pressure. These are all normal parts of teenage development, but they also make it unlikely that a teenager can knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waive their Miranda rights. The current system, even with parental involvement, isn't doing enough to protect teenagers' rights.

• Knowing: Even though juvenile Miranda warnings are written at a simpler reading level, kids in trouble with the law often score lower on intelligence tests and have higher rates of learning disabilities. Since understanding the Miranda warning gets better with age, it's unlikely that a teenager in police custody can fully grasp what it means.

• Intelligent: Because teenagers have a hard time imagining the future, it's doubtful they can truly understand what could happen if they waive their Miranda rights. Plus, they tend to focus on what they want right now rather than what might be better for them later. This, combined with their sensitivity to rewards (especially in emotional situations), makes them more likely to waive their rights without thinking it through.

• Voluntary: Imagine the pressure of being a teenager in a police station, facing down an adult who has all the power. It's easy to see how a teen might feel pressured to comply with authority and waive their rights, even if they don't really want to. Also, because teens can struggle to communicate effectively with adults in high-stress situations, their true feelings might be misinterpreted.

The current system, where parents are often asked to help teens decide about Miranda rights, isn't working.

Parents are also susceptible to police pressure and might even encourage their kids to confess, thinking it's the best thing to do. They might not know enough about the legal system to give good advice. Plus, they have their own emotions and stresses to deal with.

Ultimately, we need a better system that protects teenagers' rights when they're facing police questioning.

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Are Miranda Rights Fair for Kids?

Introduction

"Miranda rights" are very important because they protect people from accidentally saying things that could get them in trouble with the law. The police have to read these rights to anyone they arrest. Both adults and kids have these rights.

Here's the problem: even though kids have these rights, they don't always understand them. This means kids might be giving up their rights without realizing it! Let's look at why this is happening.

1. Teens might not understand what Miranda rights are.

Because Miranda rights use tricky legal words, many teens don't fully get what they mean. This is even harder for teens who have trouble reading or learning. Even if the police try to explain the rights in simpler words, it can still be really tough for kids to understand.

2. Teens don't always think about the consequences of their choices.

It's hard for kids to imagine what might happen in court weeks or months later. They might give up their Miranda rights just because they want to go home right away or as soon as they can.

3. Teens have emotions that can make it hard to make good decisions.

When kids are arrested, they might feel scared, confused, or angry. Those emotions can make it really hard to make a good choice about their Miranda rights.

4. Having a parent there doesn't always help.

Sometimes, the police will try to find a parent to help a kid understand their Miranda rights. But even parents can get confused by these rights. Plus, parents might feel pressured by the police to tell their kids to talk.

Conclusion

Miranda rights are supposed to protect everyone, including kids. But because of the way kids' brains work, they might not fully understand their rights and could end up giving them up without meaning to. That's why it's so important to make sure kids understand their Miranda rights and have an adult who understands the law to help them make the best choices.

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