Re: When Police Interrogate Children
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 13 years ago, in 2011, on the World Wide Web.
When Police Interrogate Children. The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty (2011-04-23):
On its surface, a case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court may seem to be legally trivial; it's about a juvenile who stole from neighborhood houses. But J.D.B. v. North Carolina could redefine both the law's "reasonable person" standard and what it means to be in custody. The case is…
My view is that if you are not free to leave, then you are in custody. Are students free to leave school? If not, they are always in custody. Let alone when there’s an armed police officer in the room.
You might think that this standard would make it hard for police to interrogate children. Well, yes. Then police would interrogate fewer children. Or else they could try to get legislators to get rid of compulsory attendance laws. I’m OK with that. But perhaps I am not a Reasonable Person.
Follow
But if they didn’t force people to go to school, how could we guarantee access to education?
I was talking to my mother, who is a teacher, about the unruly children problem. When she sighed that she doesn’t even know why they bother going to school at all, I was a bit surprised to have to remind her that they don’t have a choice. It seems the people working within the school system don’t really look at it that way. I do believe they see themselves as providing a product that people seek out voluntarily, just as you would a bicycle or cup of coffee.