Two lawmakers have filed bills that would change state standards for the treatment of juveniles in lock-up. They want to ban the use of pepper spray – but one sheriff, who swears by the practice, is digging in.
Outside the House of Representatives, flanked by teens holding signs saying, "Don't Lock Me Up," Senator Arthenia Joyner and Representative Mia Jones on Thursday called for repeal of a two-year-old law.
Senate Bill 2112 gave Florida counties the option of running their own juvenile detention centers. And today the Polk County Jail has a juvenile lockup and uses new standards there.David Utter, a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center:
"These standards allow harsh chemical restraints, painful electronic restraints and other adult-focus jail practices that are entirely inappropriate and dangerous for children."
The Southern Poverty Law Center helped organize the kids and signs. They're also representing the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd…by juveniles who were in Judd's facility and their parents or guardians.
Judd makes no apology for using pepper spray. He says it helps avoid injuries and in any case is nothing his officers don't use on the street.
"If on the street, as a deputy or a patrol officer, if you take away Tasers, you take away chemical agents – i.e., pepper spray – you leave us with what we used to use 40 years ago: a stick," he said. "I suggest to you that that is not how we want to treat those that are being incorrigible and resisting arrest or resisting in a detention facility."
Critics say Florida's juvenile justice system is broken, with kids getting arrested at school for misdemeanors, then put in lockup. A recent study by the Department of Juvenile Justice found for the last eight years, 67 percent of school‐related arrests were for misdemeanors. Minority students and those with disabilities got arrested at more than twice their incidence in the population. The state's arrest rate for juveniles is 40 percent higher than the national average.
Judd says the DJJ facility he took over from was the worst-rated one they had, and the kids are better off now.
"I moved them to an environment where they are better supervised, with better training in an accredited environment, and I saved the taxpayers millions of dollars," he said. "And anybody that wants to go contrary to that should seek a psychologist."
DJJ Secretary Wansley Walters supports the current standards, although in the past she's objected to using pepper spray on teens.
So Joyner and Jones' bill doesn't seem to have much traction. But the word is, juvenile justice will be in the spotlight in the upcoming session.
Elijah Armstrong, a Florida A&M University student, belongs to the Dream Defenders…a group that's been holding town meetings in minority communities statewide.
"A lot of people I've talked to in these communities don't even feel like the police are there to protect them, but they're there to take them away from their communities, from their parents, from their homes, put them in these systems, and with those higher recidivism rates – of 75, 80 percent – people are scared. People are just scared of the police."
Armstrong says the Dream Defenders are organizing a march to the Capitol on opening day.