Florida has been unfairly and arbitrarily trying children as adults, according to a new Human Rights Watch report. The research slams Florida for funneling thousands of children into the state's adult justice system more than any other US state.
“Florida's direct file law is not effectively serving public
safety... [and] is having negative, at times devastating, effects
on the lives of thousands of children and their families,”
the report's authors wrote.
The 110-page investigation, titled, “Branded for Life:
Florida’s Prosecution of Children as Adults under its ‘Direct
File’ Statute” was released by New York-based Human Rights
Watch on Thursday.
Researchers lambasted Florida for stamping children with the
‘criminal’ mark at a young age, despite most of the charges being
for non-violent felonies.
“The children caught up in the ‘direct file’ law cannot
legally vote, drink, or buy cigarettes in the state of
Florida,” Alba Morales, a HRW researcher and the author of
the report, said in a statement released alongside the report.
“Yet they can be tried as adults with no judge evaluating
that decision, and branded as felons for life.”
The report examines the difference between the ability of
children and adults to register the consequences of their
actions. “Children are in the process of growing up, both
physically and mentally,” the report states. “Their
blameworthiness is different by virtue of their immaturity.”
“Children have less developed capacities than adults to
control their impulses, to use reason to guide their behavior,
and to think about the consequences of their conduct,” the
report states. It further warned that the implied assumption that
they could, may have a potentially damaging effect on the child’s
character for life. “Removing children from the juvenile
system and placing them into the adult criminal system negates
that reality, treating children as though their characters are
already irrevocably set,” said the report.
The Florida legal system means that prosecutors are empowered to
charge teens as adults without requiring any judicial approval.
The law which empowers the prosecutor is known as the ‘Direct
File’ statute, which says that state attorneys can exercise
‘judgment and discretion the public interest’ if them believe is
required that “adult sanctions be considered or
imposed.”
“This is a law that ostensibly was passed to deal with the
most heinous crimes. That's just not how it's being used,”
Morales told CBS late Thursday.
Florida: If you are a black kid charged w drug felonies, greater chance you'll be charged as an adult than white kids pic.twitter.com/xIL8mIHKnG
— Jim Murphy (@jimmurphySF) April 10, 2014
Ninety-eight percent of the 1,500 children who were prosecuted as
adults in 2012 and 2013 were charged in this way under the
‘Direct File’ statute, the HRW report said.
High-profile cases resulting from the statute’s implementation
have drawn international attention. One of the most notable was
the charging of 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez as an adult with
first-degree murder in 2011.
In 2013 he reached a plea deal with prosecutors in which it was
agreed that which he would be sentenced as a minor for
manslaughter.