“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” Many adults can recite by heart the standard Miranda warnings meant to protect our Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.^[1] But courts require Miranda warnings only when the person questioned is “in custody.” In a recent seminal case, State v. K.R.C.,^[2] the Wisconsin Supreme Court explained how the custody inquiry changes when law enforcement officers question a child. Noting the “special care” courts must take “when analyzing the interrogation of children,” the court made clear in K.R.C. that, when reviewing the constitutionality of these interrogations, Wisconsin courts must view every aspect of the interaction through the eyes of a reasonable child.

The court’s analysis relies heavily on the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, J.D.B. v. North Carolina.^[3] Pointing out both “commonsense” and neuroscience-based differences between children and adults, the Court in J.D.B. affirmed that “it is beyond dispute that children will often feel bound to submit to police questioning when an adult in the same circumstances would feel free to leave.”^[4] Because “ignor[ing] the very real differences between children and adults — would be to deny children the full scope of the procedural safeguards” granted to adults under Miranda, the Court adopted a “reasonable child” (rather than the usual “reasonable person”) standard for evaluating custody.^[5] Yet even after J.D.B., the lower courts in K.R.C. treated age merely as one discrete factor to weigh among many others in balancing the totality of circumstances.

State v. K.R.C. Facts & Holding

In K.R.C., the Wisconsin Supreme Court clarified that this is not enough: Courts evaluating whether a child was “in custody” for purposes of Miranda must view all the traditional “adult-custody” factors from the perspective of a child. And when a child is interrogated at school, courts must consider “factors unique to students” during the custody analysis.^[6] The court emphasized that the child in this case, who was represented by the Wisconsin State Public Defenders, “was 12 years old … a middle schooler, in seventh grade, [and] still six years removed from legal adulthood.”^[7]

The court then demonstrated how this test should be applied by analyzing the circumstances of the interrogation through the perspective of a 12-year-old child. For example, the court observed that being pulled from class to speak with police officers “would likely unsettle a middle schooler.”^[8] The conversational tone and short duration of the interview were not enough to overcome the other circumstances of the interrogation: “in the end, a 12-year-old boy was questioned in a closet-like law-enforcement office with two police officers, one of whom was fully uniformed and standing in front of the door.”^[9]

The court minimized the importance of a posted sign that stated “You Are in Here Voluntarily Unless Told Otherwise. You are Being Filmed And Can Leave at Any Time!” in part because the wording might have confused a 12-year-old.^[10] A second interrogation happened within the hour, and the court painted the picture of a 12-year-old seated in a school-suspension cubicle, looking up at multiple adult authority figures “accusing him of a crime.”^[11]

The court noted that, for students in school, a school resource officer’s office is the “equivalent of a station house interrogation room.”^[12] Taken together, the court concluded that a typical student called out of class to be questioned by police in a school resource officer’s office would not feel free to simply get up and leave the room. Although the court ultimately considered it harmless error because of duplicate testimony from another witness, it held that K.R.C. was in custody and the circuit court should have excluded his un-Mirandized statements from evidence.^[13]

Relevance of K.R.C.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s guidance on when Miranda warnings are required during schoolhouse interrogations is particularly timely as police presence increases within the state’s school systems. In the 2021–22 school year, 60.6% of public schools in the U.S. employed law enforcement or school safety staff, compared to just 41.7% of schools in 2005.^[14] As noted by the ACLU of Wisconsin in its amicus brief filed in support of K.R.C., Wisconsin is no exception. The Wisconsin Legislature requires Wisconsin’s largest school district, Milwaukee Public Schools, to employ at least 25 school resource officers in its schools.^[15] Other districts have followed suit.

With this growing presence, more Wisconsin children are encountering law enforcement officers at school. Nationally, school referrals to law enforcement have increased in recent years.^[16] Wisconsin schools refer students to police at the fourth-highest rate in the nation.^[17] The burden does not fall equally: School districts with higher proportions of Black and Latino students are especially likely to employ law enforcement officers.^[18] Students with disabilities are referred to law enforcement at significantly higher rates — 34.5% of Wisconsin students referred to law enforcement in 2015 had a disability, compared to 14.4% of the student population overall.^[19] For these students, it is particularly crucial that courts fulfill Miranda’s goal that “rights declared in words” are not “lost in reality.”^[20]

While K.R.C. is an important step toward recognizing children’s vulnerability during interrogations, more could be done to safeguard their constitutional rights. Research shows that young people are often unable to understand Miranda warnings, even when the language is simplified.^[21] Even if K.R.C. leads to more youth receiving Miranda warnings, many minors still might make uninformed decisions to waive their rights.

Other states have recently enacted increased protections to ensure youth understand their rights, such as mandating an attorney consultation before youth can waive their rights.^[22] Furthermore, any contact with law enforcement can be devastating for children.^[23] Reading young people their rights does not eliminate that trauma. The core of K.R.C.’s reasoning — that youth are more susceptible to police pressure and warrant special care — should inspire communities to invest in supportive services such as restorative justice, mentoring programs, and school-based supports and divert children away from police contact and harmful involvement in the legal system entirely.

Endnotes

[1] See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 443 (1966). ^

[2] State v. K.R.C., 2026 WI 10, 419 Wis. 2d 587, 33 N.W.3d 93. ^

[3] J.D.B. v. North Carolina, 564 U.S. 261 (2011). ^

[4] Id. at 264–65. ^

[5] Id. at 281. ^

[6] K.R.C., 2026 WI 10, ¶ 23, 419 Wis. 2d 587. ^

[7] Id. ¶ 27. ^

[8] Id. ¶ 28. ^

[9] Id. ^

[10] Id. ¶¶ 7, 31. ^

[11] Id. ¶ 29. ^

[12] Id. ¶ 35. ^

[13] Id. ¶¶ 38–42. ^

[14] See Nat’l Ctr. for Educ. Stat., Digest of Education Statistics: Table 233.70, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_233.70.asp (last visited July 30, 2026). ^

[15] Wis. Stat. § 62.90(8); see 2023 Wis. Act 12. ^

[16] See U.S. Dep’t of Educ., Off. for Civ. Rts., Referrals to Law Enforcement and School-Related Arrests in U.S. Public Schools (Jan. 2023), https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/referrals-and-arrests-part-5.pdf. ^

[17] Madeline Fox, Milwaukee Public Schools Disciplines Black Students at Disproportionate Rate, Study Finds, WPR (Mar. 29, 2022), https://www.wpr.org/education/milwaukee-public-schools-disciplines-black-students-disproportionate-rate-study-finds (reporting that 9 of every 1,000 Wisconsin students were referred to police in the 2017-2018 school year, compared to a national rate of 4.5 per 1,000). ^

[18] Advancement Project, A Cop is a Cop: The Rise of School District Police Departments and Why they Must Be Dismantled 5, https://advancementproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/AP-SchoolDistrictReport-V4-1.pdf (last visited July 30, 2026). ^

[19] Susan Ferriss, Virginia Tops Nation in Sending Students to Cops, Courts: Where Does Your State Rank?, Ctr. for Pub. Integrity (Apr. 10, 2015), https://publicintegrity.org/education/virginia-tops-nation-in-sending-students-to-cops-courts-where-does-your-state-rank. ^

[20] See Miranda, 384 U.S. at 443. ^

[21] Sydney Bakey & Emily Haney-Caron, Evaluating the Effectiveness of Simplified Miranda Warnings: An Empirical Examination of Policy on Youth Comprehension and Waiver Decisions, 49 Law & Hum. Behav. 411, 413, 418–20 (Oct. 2025). ^

[22] See, e.g., Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 3–8A–14.2; Cal. Welfare & Insts. Code § 625.6. ^

[23] See, e.g., Dylan B. Jackson et al., Police Stops Among At-Risk Youth: Repercussions for Mental Health, 65 J. Adolescent Health 627, 629–32 (2019), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31495640/ (data collected from youth revealed police stops could contribute to emotional distress during a stop, trauma and stigma after a stop, and “the potential for extensive compromises in emotional and mental well-being among some youth stopped by the police”). ^