Discussion: The Search of a Child or Teenager

Although I understand the logic behind the post and its arguments, I think that juvenile criminal records should be accounted for when conducting searches. Parental presence during searches must be mandatory for first-time offenders or suspects since these adolescents or children are the direct responsibility of the parents. In other words, the search of a child or teenager is conducted on someone with no ability to consent, self-protect, and legally held viable as a separate individual with no need for a guardian. If a substance or item is spotted by a law enforcement officer and immediate danger is present, this should be the only circumstance when the source of danger must be nullified. However, searches can be conducted without a presence of direct threat, in which case suspects and first-time offenders must be given parental presence since the parent is responsible for the juvenile. Therefore, I agree that a guardian must be ensured during the searches. For recidivist juveniles, some groups tend to be more prone to recommit certain crimes than others because juvenile offenders can be divided into several clusters (Mulder et al., 2019). For example, it is stated that a high recidivism rate among juveniles includes the ones with antisocial identities, frequent offenders, and adolescents from problematic backgrounds (Mulder et al., 2019). However, teenagers with sexual problems, sex offenders, and weak social identities tend to have lower recidivism rates (Mulder et al., 2019). Therefore, based on the evidence, the former group with a high recidivism rate should not be granted guardians and parental presence during searches since their re-offense rate is around 80-90% (Mulder et al., 2019). Law enforcement officers should track the type of offense committed in the past and the cluster of juvenile criminal categories.

Reference

Mulder, E., Brand, E., Bullens, R., & van Marle, H. (2019). Toward a classification of juvenile offenders: Subgroups of serious juvenile offenders and severity of recidivism. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 63(6), 819–836.