Legal Representation During Interrogations of Minors or Suspects with Intellectual Disabilities
- ACRI
- Jul 9
- 2 min read
A new bill in the Knesset seeks to regulate the right to legal representation during interrogations of minors and people with intellectual and mental disabilities who are being investigated as suspects and are not entitled to be interrogated by child investigators or special investigators. The proposal stems from the conclusions of the Danziger Committee for the Prevention of Wrongful Convictions, which points to a high level of risk for false confessions among these populations, due to the age or mental or intellectual condition of the suspects.
This is an important, and welcome, proposal, but it excludes certain offenses. The current version of the proposal exempts security offenses, and during committee discussions, suggestions arose to exclude additional offenses related to criminal organizations and weapons. Most suspects in these offenses are Palestinians, and many of them are minors.
In the petition ACRI sent to the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee, attorneys Nitsan Ilani and Debbie Gild-Hayo argued that there is no substantive basis for excluding security offenses from the law. On the contrary: suspects of serious and dangerous crimes or crimes that have a high level of public interest are at increased risk of giving false confessions, and therefore need more of the protections provided by the law. In other words, the rationale underlying the proposal—the desire to prevent false confessions—applies even more when dealing with minors and people with mental or intellectual disabilities suspected of security offenses. The petition argues that excluding particular offenses without substantive justification, and especially when excluding offenses in which the overwhelming majority of suspects are Palestinians, is illegal and discriminatory and violates the constitutional rights of suspects in criminal proceedings, as well as the public interest in preventing false confessions.
The petition further argues that the law will effectively legislatively create two separate criminal investigation tracks for minor suspects or those with mental or intellectual disabilities: suspects in most offenses will be entitled to legal representation and protections during their interrogations, while suspects in security offenses (and potentially additional offenses in which most suspects are Palestinian) will not be entitled to these rights, and will be exposed to improper investigation methods and rights violations. The bill, if it were to pass, would contribute to the increasing trend of two separate policing and enforcement systems for Jews and Palestinians, which ACRI has written about in depth in the report "Two Police Forces for Two Peoples.”
ACRI's petition, July 9, 2025 (Heb)
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