Too young to plead? Risk, rationality, and plea bargaining’s innocence problem in adolescents.

Abstract

The overwhelming majority of both adult and adolescent convictions occur as the result of guilty pleas rather than trial. This means that convictions are often the result of decisions made by defendants rather than jurors. It is therefore important to study decision making in defendants to ensure convictions are occurring in a fair and principled way. Research suggests that the current plea-bargaining system is leading innocent defendants to systematically plead guilty to crimes that they did not commit, and that this may be more widespread in adolescents than adults. The current study uses fuzzy-trace theory to develop and test an explanation of why adolescents are more likely than adults to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit. The authors show that, as predicted, adolescents are more likely than adults to plead guilty when they are innocent, and that this is due to developmental differences in the use of gist representations in decision making whereby values are unlikely to be retrieved and applied when making decisions. These results have implications for postconviction claims of innocence by adolescents, procedural rules governing adolescent plea bargaining, and the practice of adolescent plea bargaining more generally.

Cumulative Disadvantage: A Psychological Framework for Understanding How Innocence Can Lead to Confession, Wrongful Conviction, and Beyond

“…It is beyond our scope to describe them here, but at-risk demographic groups, such as juveniles, are especially susceptible to compliance with authority, increasing their willingness to cede their rights, confess to police, and plead guilty (see Cleary, 2017; Redlich, Zottoli, & Daftary-Kapur, 2019). Because juveniles are at heightened risk for false confessions and guilty pleas (see Helm, Reyna, Franz, & Novick, 2018; Malloy et al, 2014; Redlich, Zottoli, & Daftary-Kapur, 2019; Zottoli et al, 2016), the cumulative disadvantage process may be especially pernicious.…”

When Irrational Biases Are Smart: A Fuzzy-Trace Theory of Complex Decision Making

“…The risk-promotion effect in adolescence is both cognitive (representational) and motivational (reward-related). Research shows that even when teens endorse rewards and values to a similar degree when compared to non-risk-taking adolescents or young adults, their behavior is less likely to be consistent with their own values (e.g., [59]). Thus, reward sensitivity is one of the causal factors that elevates teen risk taking, but their cognition also focuses on amounts of rewards, rather than the presence or absence of rewards, making them more vulnerable.…”

Simulation and the predictive brain

“…When abstraction was manipulated per construal level theory, its effect on decision quality was mediated by gist representations (a potential rapprochement; Fukukura et al 2013). Contrary to other theories, fuzzier, less detailed representations are associated with contextually biased but higher-quality developmentally advanced decision-making (Helm et al 2018;). Extensive evidence contradicts the assertion that "In order for a target-representation to be functional, it must be accurate and detailed.…”