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The Full Story
The Children in the Law Laboratory (CITL) was established in 2015 by Dr. Stacia N. Stolzenberg and focuses on how children interact with the legal system.
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Research at CITL examines how children report maltreatment, as well as how their reports are investigated and prosecuted. This requires mixed-methods, wherein we assess what transpires in real cases and use these insights to assess children’s developmental capacities in the laboratory. The findings are then used to inform current practices and provide data-based principles for improving case decision-making, during the investigation and later prosecution of child maltreatment.
The ultimate goal of our research is to promote child safety.
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See below for more information on our four main pillars of research.
How Maltreatment is Investigated and Prosecuted
To best facilitate children’s successful reporting of maltreatment, it is necessary to examine how cases are processed, and which are successful. We assess how prosecution and defense strategies relate to case factors (e.g. child age, relationship to perpetrator, severity of the allegation), and how such factors influence children’s production of details or demonstration of inconsistency. We also pay attention to those cases that result in an acquittal, and what confusion, misunderstandings, or inconsistencies arose at the trial.
Children’s Developmental Competencies and Vulnerabilities
Child victims have unique needs as their cognitive and socioemotional development creates special considerations for investigators. It is necessary to examine and understand their developmental competencies and vulnerabilities. We examine how children’s credibility is challenged in subtle ways when they report abuse, while assessing the utility of such methods in the laboratory to best understand how children interpret and respond to questioning.
Promoting Truthful and Accurate Disclosures
Overcoming children’s reluctance to disclose wrongdoing is a significant challenge for the field. We examine best practices for investigative interviews with children across laboratory, field, and juror research, focusing on novel techniques that can elicit truthful disclosures from children. Primarily, our effort has focused on the field component, where we assess what happens in both forensic interviews and criminal trials, and then work with our collaborators to connect our findings back to both laboratory and juror research.
Research Methodology
At the most basic level, much of our work examines how to effectively elicit information. We have translated our research on developmentally-sensitive investigative interviewing more broadly to social science methodology. Our work aims to effectively collect data from research participants and facilitate collecting more robust and reliable data.
