Justice to youth language needs: human rights undermined by an invisible disadvangtage

This Action addresses the lack of consistent policies to establish the language abilities that children and adolescents need to possess in order to participate in justice proceedings effectively. The journey through criminal justice is based on highly verbal processes that require a level of verbal ability that is unlikely among young offenders for several reasons: firstly, research in the English-speaking countries (severely limited in other European countries) shows that the prevalence of language impairment is up to six times higher in the population of youth offenders; if undiagnosed and untreated, it increases the risk of re-offending. Furthermore, linguistics research demonstrates that some syntactic abilities are still under development during (pre)puberty, and that the abilities to connect language to context may be underdeveloped even after the age of 18. In addition, ability to handle structurally complex language is low when academic attainment is low, which is common among young offenders. However, there are no procedures to establish language ability across populations to date and lack of awareness pervades the justice systems. Even where screening for language difficulties exists, it is not sufficiently nuanced to capture issues with the most common structures found in justice interchanges and no attention is paid to the needs of children from different education backgrounds, with disabilities, who are multilingual, or who are deaf or hearing impaired. To ensure protection of human rights of this vulnerable population, an Action to assess the situation at European transnational level and to propose specific measures to identify language needs is urgent.