Children as eyewitnesses of crime: Understanding metacognition & memory in children to improve legal procedures

By Madeleine Ingham

Children often witness or are victims of crime, and so it is integral that legal decision-makers are able to accurately interpret their memory evidence.

Last year alone in England and Wales, 841,000 children were victims of crime. The number of children contributing memory evidence is increasing dramatically, with recent UK data reporting 16,000 child witnesses aged under 18 attending court in 2018. Children as young as 2 are expected to give police statements, yet their evidence is often regarded as unreliable and inaccurate. This disregard for young children’s accounts has led to many miscarriages of justice and wrongful convictions.

Common misconceptions about child eyewitnesses

Up until recently, legal decision-makers have generally concluded that children are unreliable witnesses. Age is often been used to predict accuracy, and so it is believed that the younger the child is the less likely they are to provide accurate information from memory recall. This is based off evidence that suggests that children are unable to accurately judge their confidence when deciding if a decision is correct or incorrect. However, there is little information on whether young…