A guard at a now-defunct girls' detention facility in Milton was found guilty of child abuse.
At the Capitol, Representative Gayle Harrell, a Stuart Republican, saw the House Judiciary Committee pass her bill to protect teens in lock-ups run by the Department of Juvenile Justice.
"The department wanted to make sure we had protections in place for the youth who are in their facilities, so that if there were situations that were inappropriate, or cruel or malicious punishment was inflicted on those youth, there would be an ability to prosecute appropriately", Harrell said.
A group of citizen lobbyists fanned out to ask lawmakers to repeal a two-year-old bill allowing teens to be kept in adult jails to save money.Reverend Rick Branch, co-founder of the Escambia Youth Justice Coalition, came to Tallahassee to support the parents of teens in the Polk County Jail, where the standards allow them to be pepper-sprayed or Tasered – unlike the DJJ standards.
Branch said, "The same standards can apply in Escambia and all the other counties, and we just want the Legislature to do something about it. We need to have the DJJ standards apply to all the children in the state of Florida."
That measure has yet to be heard in either chamber, but Harrell's bill to protect teens from abuse in DJJ lock-ups now goes to the House floor.