Two bills designed to enhance the rights of children the police seek to interrogate are receiving renewed interest after languishing in the state legislature since early 2019. The bills would make it mandatory that a youth consult with an attorney before there can be any waiver of “Miranda” rights and interrogation by the police, define the circumstances in which the police may claim an interrogation of a child to be “necessary,” and require that if there is a valid waiver an interrogation must be videotaped, reports The City.

The Legal Aid Society strongly supports the bills, which have received renewed attention against the backdrop of the national conversation on policing. Law enforcement used such coercive tactics and took advantage of children’s vulnerability to exact false confessions from the exonerated Central Park Five. Nonetheless, as Jared Trujillo, President of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys noted, “We had sympathy for the Central Park Five but nothing’s really changed.”