Moving towards ‘child-friendly justice’. A study of the spanish juvenile justice system´s accessibility

Authors

  • Esther Fernández Molina Centro de Investigación en Criminología. Universidad de Castilla - La Mancha Spain
  • Beatriz Blanco Martos Centro de Investigación en Criminología. Universidad de Castilla - La Mancha Spain

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24310/Boletin-criminologico.2015.v21i0.7698

Keywords:

child-friendly justice, readability level, legal terminology, juvenile justice, accessibility of the justice system

Abstract

In 2010, the Council of Europe adopted guidelines on child-friendly justice. The specialized language that is used in the courtroom is one of the main obstacles to the accessibility of justice. A quasi-experimental design was conducted to evaluate the degree to which juveniles understood some legal documents and their level of knowledge of legal terms. The results of this study indicate that the language used in juvenile proceedings is replete with words that juveniles do not understand. Furthermore, findings show that the readability level is too high therefore, the capacity required to understand legal texts exceeds the reading comprehension level that can be expected of adolescents.

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References

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Published

2015-07-16

How to Cite

Fernández Molina, E., & Blanco Martos, B. (2015). Moving towards ‘child-friendly justice’. A study of the spanish juvenile justice system´s accessibility. Boletín Criminológico, (21). https://doi.org/10.24310/Boletin-criminologico.2015.v21i0.7698