By Rachel Cohen

I have worked extensively with teenagers and young people in general.

Many of these adolescents, typically between the ages of 10 and 19, are on the fringes of society and starting to getting involved in criminal behaviour.

During the last ten to 15 years there has been an increasing amount of research making the link between poor education, poor communication skills and the greater likelihood of falling into criminality. It has been suggested that over 60% of the adult male prison population have some kind of Speech and Language difficulty.

Researchers have considered topics including language impairment and behavioural issues, language skills and delinquency, communication deficits and aggression and the role of language in criminal behaviour.

Solicitors, barristers, judges and others in the day-to-day justice system are used to seeing defendants with low IQ, ADHD, learning disabilities and poor communication capabilities.

The pockets of research that have been carried out have helped enormously with the justice system’s understanding of how deep the links run between a young person’s educational background, resulting poor communication and the descent into criminal activity. As a cohort, these young people are overrepresented in the criminal justice system.

Working in both Criminal and Family Courts regularly, I see first hand the struggles that many adolescents have communicating and the vital difference that intermediaries such as myself can make in ensuring they are able to receive fair access to justice.

Often the first hurdle they have to overcome is not being seen as ‘another stroppy teenager’ who is arrogant and giving off the impression that they don’t want to be in Court, i.e. a typical characterisation of a teenager.

It’s sad to see how many young people have written themselves off, particularly if they have already attended previous hearings before an intermediary is appointed to assist with communication.

I have had young people tell me ‘I don’t have a clue, Miss’ and ‘I might as well have been reading a Chinese menu’.

The difference between not understanding what is happening in the justice system and having the communication support of an organisation like The Intermediary Cooperative can make a huge difference to someone’s outcome.

For example, I have recently been supporting a young person with a behavioural condition called Oppositional Defiant Disorder. This can include frequent and persistent anger, irritability and a tendency to argue.

This young person was charged with a wounding offence in which the most serious sentence could be in the region of 15 years down to a smaller sentence of a couple of years, possibly suspended, for an early guilty plea.

The defendant’s solicitor and barrister were struggling to engage with him and concepts such as ‘reasonable force’, ‘wounding with intent’, ‘serious harm’ and ‘self-defence’ meant nothing to him. His lack of education meant that the individual also had no sense of time, which meant he could not comprehend the difference between, say, five and 15 years in prison.

Working closely with the young person’s legal team for a whole day, I helped to enable them to have a greater understanding of the implications of the decisions they could make regarding how to proceed and the potential pros and cons of an early plea and continuing to plead not guilty through to a full trial.

It was not my job to influence the defendant one way or the other, but to provide the communication support required for them to make the most informed decision.

Throughout the discussions, I would write notes and provide simple drawings to assist with the person’s understanding. To overcome the lack of sense of time I talked in terms of milestone events such as 18th and 21st birthdays, getting married and potentially having children.

An intermediary is neutral and our primary purpose is to ensure that service users understand what is happening and to provide explanation and clarity when needed.

The contribution of an experienced intermediary should smooth the flow of proceedings. We are there to facilitate communication between all parties and assist in the management of a vulnerable person.

Both the client’s solicitor and barrister were grateful for the support that I was able to provide in this case. The barrister had previously seen me assisting another service user in a different case and had contacted me when she recognised that this client also had a requirement for an intermediary.

  • Rachel Cohen is one of TIC’s founding members and a former director. Rachel qualified as a Registered Intermediary with the Ministry of Justice in 2014. She has undertaken further training in 2017 and 2021 with City Law School enabling her to work throughout the whole trial process and across all areas of the justice system.

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