This piece is old, but it should be here on this forum somewhere. At the time of this story, kids were frequently transferred from one program to another in the Florida juvenile justice system for a variety of reasons. Yet, each time they got transferred, the clock started over, even when the transfer was for reasons unrelated to misbehavior.
Programs and facilities mentioned were given color emphasis.
—•?|•?•0•?•|?•— —•?|•?•0•?•|?•— —•?|•?•0•?•|?•—
Detention for teens at Florida's Dept of Juvenile Justice facilities often extendedBy Megan O'Matz, Staff Writer
Posted March 21 2004After he tried to kill himself by sitting in the middle of a busy road, a 13-year-old Orlando foster teen who had been starved and whipped by his adoptive mom was committed in August 2000 to
Lakeside Alternatives, an Orange County mental hospital.
There, he grabbed a pen and tried to stab a staff worker attempting to inject him with Thorazine, an antipsychotic drug. The boy was charged with battery and ordered to attend the
Orlando Marine Institute, a six-month, sea life educational program for "low-risk" juvenile offenders.
Those six months have stretched into four years.
Now 17, the youth, is still in the custody of Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice. In all, he's been moved five times within the department's facilities.
Unlike adults who, when charged with a crime, serve their time and are released, juvenile delinquents in Florida often remain in state custody far longer than their original commitments dictate. The department regularly extends the stays of young offenders by moving them from one rehabilitation program to another on the grounds that the youths are not succeeding, are misbehaving, or are unable to be helped in their current setting.
For the Orlando teen, whom the South Florida Sun-Sentinel is not naming because of his age and his involvement in the juvenile justice system, the moves were largely because he hit another teen or a staff worker.
"I didn't have no anger problem when I was on the outs," the boy said in a recent deposition. "It just started happening when I got locked up."
The transfers are often made from low-security programs to more prison-like facilities where the teens have far fewer liberties.
The state's goal in further detaining children is to ensure that they get help before returning to society.
But attorneys who represent the youths and others who work closely with the state's juvenile delinquency system say Florida does not provide appropriate mental health, education and support services to children in the department's care. In many cases, the department places children in programs that don't meet their needs, necessitating transfers and lengthening the youths' stay in detention.
The critics argue that the state is unfairly holding the youths and at times damaging them in facilities where there can be violence and inadequate medical care, as in the case of Omar Paisley, the 17-year-old who died of a ruptured appendix at the
Miami-Dade Regional Juvenile Detention Center.
"They're basically being held hostage," said Tallahassee attorney Karen Gievers, who is representing the Orlando youth in a federal lawsuit against the state.
Critics of the process note that the youths are not given credit for the time they've served in the department's facilities. In essence, the clock starts over each time they're moved.
Judges commit children to the department's custody and require that it place them in treatment programs depending on whether they pose a low, moderate, high or maximum security risk to the public. The programs average several months to a year and a half to complete.
"We're working to get them equipped to become law-abiding citizens when they return home," said Catherine Arnold, a department spokeswoman.
Not everyone sees it that way.
Asked in the deposition why he does not like the
Eckerd Youth Development Center, his current placement in Okeechobee, the Orlando teen said: "Cuz I've been with too many other programs and I just feel they [are] all the same. ... They all claim to have treatment. And I just feel I had enough treatment."
The Orlando boy does not know when he will be freed. "I gotta learn how to control my anger," he said when asked what he needs to do to get out. His "last objective," he was told by program workers, was to tell his life story -- one consisting of horrible abuse at the hands of his adoptive mother -- to a group therapy session of his peers, a prospect he dreaded for fear that the other boys could use the information to provoke him.
"I'm depressed a lot," he said.
Decisions on whether to extend the incarcerations of juvenile offenders are made in informal meetings at detention centers or program sites among the department's staff, program specialists and teachers. Parents or guardians, foster care workers, probation officers, the youths and their attorneys are invited, said Charles Chervanik, the department's assistant secretary for residential services.
But lawyers who represent juvenile delinquents said parents often do not come if they live in another county and sometimes the children are not transported from their programs to the meeting site. And the attorneys themselves say they are not always told of the meetings, especially in cases in which a child is sent to a program in another county.
"We had to fight very hard for DJJ to even give us notice of the meetings," said Melinda Blostein, a Broward County juvenile public defender. Without an attorney present, she said: "Obviously, the kid has no way of having any meaningful voice."
Once the department determines a child should be moved, approval is sought from a judge when the youth is to go to a more- or less-secure facility. The judge can grant or deny the transfer or conduct a hearing. If no response is received from the court within 10 days, the department transfers the child. The department is not required to obtain court approval for "lateral" moves to a facility with the same level of security, Chervanik said.
According to the department, the state approved 855 transfers of children in residential programs and denied 129 from January 2003 to the present. The reasons given for transferring the children included committing a new offense, being too aggressive or that the program could not meet their medical or mental health needs. Some children "needed to be closer to home," while others were "too young/too old for the program." Some kids walked away from unlocked facilities, earning them longer stays in programs surrounded by barbed wire fences.
"Transfers are an inefficient use of resources," concluded a December report from the state Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability. The review found that the department could reduce the number of beds it needs and save taxpayer dollars if it simply provided the needed treatment to children initially rather than moving them from program to program.
In the review, some juvenile court judges confided that they have committed children accused only of misdemeanors to lockdown programs solely so the youths can obtain intensive treatment for mental illness, drug addiction or other emotional problems -- treatment that they can't get in nonresidential department programs.
Noting that in fiscal 2002-03 only 10 percent of the youths admitted to residential programs were transferred, the department's former secretary W.G. "Bill" Bankhead, wrote in a response to the review that, while many transfers are appropriate, they should be limited to "circumstances where they are absolutely necessary."
"A key issue in reducing transfers is making an initial appropriate placement," Bankhead wrote.
Children's advocates agree.
In Broward County in April 2003, department officials decided to transfer a 15-year-old youth accused of several batteries from
South Pines Juvenile Residential Facility, a Pembroke Pines program for "low- and moderate-risk" boys. The reason given for the move: The boy, a foster child with a long history of documented mental illness, needed more intensive psychiatric treatment, which the facility could not provide. He'd spent eight months in the program.
"Why would he even be sent there in the first place, when it was clear that he needed more intense services than what was being offered?" asked his lawyer, Melissa Zelniker of Legal Aid Services of Broward County. "They set him up for failure."
Palm Beach County Juvenile Court Judge Ronald V. Alvarez said the transfer of children from one program to another has long been a concern of his. He often insists on conducting a hearing on proposed moves.
"If you address the underlying problems, more often than not, you'll get a better result," he said. "But we're not sufficiently attending to those underlying problems."
Some children, Alvarez said, quickly succeed in the department's programs and emerge better off. But many others flounder.
"I tell my kids: 'This system is not designed for you to get out.'"
Megan O'Matz can be reached at
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/ ... ws-florida