Branded for Life: Florida’s Prosecution of Children as Adults under its “Direct File” Statute
This report from Human Rights Watch provides an overview of the impact of Florida’s direct file statute on youth tried as adults in the state. Additionally, the report contains recommendations to different systems practitioners and decisionmakers for ending the direct file practice.
From the report:
Florida transfers more children out of the juvenile system and into adult court than any other state. In the last five years alone, more than 12,000 juvenile crime suspects in Florida were transferred to the adult court system. New statistics developed by Human Rights Watch based on official Florida state data show that more than 60 percent of the [youth] Florida transferred to adult court during this period were charged with nonviolent felonies. Only 2.7 percent were prosecuted for murder.
Whether a particular youth accused of a particular crime in Florida ends up in adult court is in an important sense arbitrary. The new data show that nearly 98 percent of the [youth] in adult court in Florida end up there pursuant to the state’s “direct file” statute, which gives prosecutors unfettered discretion to move a wide range of juvenile cases to adult court (including any 16- and 17-year-old accused of a felony), with no involvement by a judge whatsoever. The data show that this discretion is being exercised differently by prosecutors in different judicial circuits within Florida. Too often, as detailed below, the same crime is treated differently depending on the predilections of the prosecutor where the crime occurs: different judicial circuit, different outcome. And there is evidence that racial bias is affecting that exercise of discretion with respect to certain crimes.
Most states in the United States do not allow for direct file. International law requires that children, including those accused of crimes, be treated as children. And for good reason. Neuroscience, recent US Supreme Court decisions, and a by-now large and growing literature show that children, including 16- and 17-year-old [youth], are different and in important respects less culpable than adults who commit the same crimes, and more amenable to rehabilitation, a key objective that the juvenile system is designed to achieve.
