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16 Current Issues Crim. Just. 220 (2004-2005)
Interviewing Juvenile Offenders: The Importance of Oral Language Competence

handle is hein.journals/cicj16 and id is 220 raw text is: Contemporary Comments Interviewing juvenile offenders: The importance of oral language competence A police officer is interviewing a 14 year-old 'frequent flyer' in the juvenile justice system. In an effort to gauge the extent of this young man's recent exploits, the police officer poses the following question: 'So - could you have stolen upwards of twenty cars?' 'Ye-eh' replied the young offender indignantly 'Of course'. Introduction In this exchange, the young man in question had not, in fact, stolen 'upwards of twenty cars'. His self-incriminating response, however, stems from a pervasive yet invisible difficulty experienced by many young offenders with respect to processing and using oral language effectively. Such difficulties may not be evident in superficial social exchanges, but stand to create considerable disadvantage in the demanding context of investigative and/ or evidentiary interviews. In this paper, we will outline what is meant by oral language abilities and describe the developmental significance of oral language competence, as a context for presenting our recent research showing that juvenile offenders are an unrecognised group of language impaired adolescents. The implications of language impairment for investigative and evidentiary interviewing are described, together with some suggested strategies for minimising disadvantage associated with these problems. The words 'juvenile offender' carry some strong associations. Concepts which spring to mind might include male gender, at-risk, behaviour problem, attentional disorder, substance abuse, academic under-achievement, unemployment, and learning disability. These associations have a strong foundation in reality. There is no shortage of evidence to show that young people who find themselves engaged with the Juvenile Justice system display a range of characteristics consistent with the descriptors above (Loeber 1996; Loeber et al 1998). Less well-recognised in the literature on young offenders, but no less relevant to their management within the juvenile justice system, is their risk for significant oral language deficits. Defining the term 'oral language' Speech Pathologists make an important distinction between speech and language. Speech refers to the mechanical process of using the tongue, lips, teeth, jaw, vocal cords and lungs to produce a system of sounds that are used by speakers of a given language (Berko Gleason 1997). For example, the sound system used in English is very different from that used in a tonal language such as Thai. Healthy babies are born with the capability of acquiring a sound system for any language, but adapt to the one(s) that they are actually exposed to - making it harder to acquire another sound system in later life, as anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language will attest. Language however, refers to our knowledge of words, (their structure and shades of meanings), sentence structure, and the ways in which

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