Moral Mitigation

This approach involves interrogators providing psychological "outs" that make confession feel less like an admission of serious wrongdoing. They might suggest the act was accidental, that the victim provoked it, that peer pressure was to blame, or that anyone in the same situation would have done the same thing. By reframing the crime as understandable or minimizing its legal consequences, interrogators reduce the psychological barrier to confession. Juveniles, who are already prone to short-term thinking and eager to please authority figures, may accept these rationalizations without understanding that legally, a confession is still a confession regardless of the mitigating narrative wrapped around it.