Get-Tough Juvenile Justice Reforms: The Florida Experience

Abstract

Get-tough reforms aimed at juvenile offenders have become commonplace in the United States. In the last decade, almost every state has modified laws relating to juvenile crime in some way, and the direction of the reforms has been very clear. States are getting tougher on juvenile offenders either by shifting away from traditional rehabilitation models to punishment-oriented juvenile justice or by legislating new or expanded legal means by which greater numbers of juvenile offenders may be moved to criminal court for adult processing and punishment. The present study focuses on a major set of juvenile justice reforms in Florida and the impact on actual practice. Florida is unique in a historical sense because it has transferred large numbers of juveniles to criminal court for two decades, and, currently, because it has more juveniles in its prisons than any other state. Despite incremental get-tough reforms, the new transfer provisions have had a negligible impact. The effects of Florida's get-tough laws and practices should be instructive for those other states that have begun such reforms more recently.