The Florida Experiment: An Analysis of the Practice of Sending Kids to Adult court

		CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS RELEASE

		www.cjcj.org

Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 54 Dore Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466

For Immediate Release: September, 1999

The Florida Experiment: An Analysis of the Practice of Sending Kids to Adult court

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CONTACT: Daniel Macallair
E-mail: [dmacallair@cjcj.org]
Tel: (415) 621-5661 x310

New Study finds "prosecutorial discretion waiver," which is currently under consideration by Congress, disparately applied, ineffective at curbing crime

House-Senate Conference Committee Discusses Bill This Week Granting Federal Prosecutors Discretion to Try Juveniles As Adults

Washington, DC: A new report profiling Florida's experiment with allowing prosecutors to decide whether juveniles should be tried in adult court ("prosecutorial discretion waiver") has failed to reduce crime and has been implemented in a racially disparate manner. Further, although touted as targeting the "worst of the worse," the survey shows that the vast majority of youth referred to adult court by prosecutors were charged with non-violent offenses.

The report, by the DC-based Justice Policy Institute reviewed research compiled by academics at the University of Central Florida and Florida State University, Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice, the Urban Institute and the latest juvenile crime statistics from the Justice Department. "On every indicator for which we evaluated prosecutorial discretion waiver, from public safety, to targeting violent offenders, to racial equity, the practice was found sorely wanting," stated Jason Ziedenberg, policy analyst for the Justice Policy Institute and co-author of the report.

In Legislation which recently passed the House of Representatives (HR 1501, sponsored by Congressman Bill McCollum of Florida), federal prosecutors would be given non-reviewable discretion to try youths as young as 13 in adult court for violent and non-violent offenses. A ballot initiative which will go before California voters in March, 2000 (Proposition 6) would also grant prosecutors discretion to decide whether a juvenile should be tried in adult court. In both the federal and California systems, neutral judges are currently vested with the authority of deciding whether a juvenile should be tried as an adult upon motion from a prosecutor, a practice known as "judicial waiver."

Florida pioneered prosecutorial discretion waiver in 1981 and is the state which uses the practice most frequently. In fact, in 1995, the study reports that Florida prosecutors by themselves sent nearly as many juveniles to adult court (7,000) as judges tried in the entire U. S. (9,700). Despite this fact, Florida had the second highest rate of violent juvenile crime in the U.S. in 1995, 48% higher than the national average. The report's major findings include:

Youth sent to Florida's adult court system are a third more likely to be rearrested than youth with similar prior arrests and current charges who are retained in Florida's juvenile justice system.
Youths transferred to the adult system in Florida get rearrested almost twice as quickly upon release as youth retained in the state's juvenile justice system.
When they reoffended, youths transferred to the adult system in Florida committed serious crimes at twice the rate of youth retained in the juvenile justice system.
In the jurisdictions studied, only 28% of youths transferred by Florida prosecutors to adult court were charged with violent offenses.
African Americans were 2.3 times more likely than white youth to be transferred to adult court.

"Prosecutorial discretion waiver is not a policy innovation which Congressman McCollum should export from his home state," noted Vincent Schiraldi, the Institute's director. "Federal judges, most of whom are Republican-appointed former prosecutors, are perfectly able to decide which kids ought to be tried as adults."