Author ORCID Identifier
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2026
DOI
10.1037/0000495-012
Abstract
Black youth may be even more vulnerable than other youth to admitting to crimes they did not commit in the context of police interrogations. In support, analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations indicates that 65% of people who were wrongfully convicted on the basis of false confessions they gave when under 18 years old are Black, whereas only 14% of the U.S. population is Black. In this chapter, I seek to understand the overrepresentation of Black youth in samples of juvenile false confessors by examining the cultural stereotype about Black criminality in relation to both investigators and suspects. Specifically, I review relevant social psychological theory and research concerning racial criminalization and stereotype threat. Throughout, I use Lee Arthur Hester’s case to demonstrate the relevance of those phenomena to juvenile interrogations and confessions. I also offer a number of directions for future research and suggest policy reforms in hopes of spurring change that will reduce Black youths’ vulnerability to miscarriages of justice.
Recommended Citation
Najdowski, Cynthia J., "System Disparities: Racial Criminalization and the Risk of Coerced and False Confessions in Youth" (2026). Psychology Faculty Scholarship. 60.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/psychology_fac_scholar/60
Included in
Constitutional Law Commons, Criminal Law Commons, Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons, Developmental Psychology Commons, Fourteenth Amendment Commons, Juvenile Law Commons, Law and Psychology Commons, Law and Race Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons, Social Justice Commons, Social Psychology Commons, Social Psychology and Interaction Commons
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Comments
Posted with permission. This is the author's preprint version (a.k.a. pre-typeset version). The version of record can be found here: Najdowski, C. J. (2026). System disparities: Racial criminalization and the risk of coerced and false confessions in youth. In L. C. Malloy, R. K. Helm, & T. M. Zottoli (Eds.), Confessions and guilty pleas of youth: Developmental science and practical implications (pp. 145–159). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000495-012