While Florida has taken steps toward integrating trauma-informed practices in the juvenile justice system, the state needs to reconsider its treatment of youth. Notably, utilizing trauma-informed care in the juvenile justice system, while necessary, is not sufficient — prevention should be the goal, with trauma-informed services implemented in all child-involved systems. The state must also stop incarcerating children with adults and offer all juveniles in detention/incarceration access to trauma-informed services.
Florida has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, and leads the nation in the number of children prosecuted as adults and the number of children incarcerated in adult facilities. Currently, over 14,000 youths are in juvenile detention and hundreds of others are direct-filed and placed into adult correctional facilities each year.
More than 60% of these direct-file cases are for nonviolent offenses like drug use, disorderly conduct, probation violations, property crimes and status offenses. The sentences imposed on the direct-filed children are often so short that the majority are released before their 25th birthdays, leading one to wonder whether such transfers are necessary.
[To read the complete article by Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, go to: https://jjie.org/2019/11/25/tr...ntion-is-not-enough/]
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