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JUVENILE JUSTICE
January 1, 1996
TRANSCRIPT
One city's attempt to deal with the number one crime problem in the U.S. - violent crime committed by teenagers. Betty Ann Bowser reports from Jacksonville, Florida.
MAN: Do you all feel like you're big enough to be in this cell? Most of these guys in here are my size or bigger, my size and bigger.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Going to jail in Jacksonville, Florida, can be a very personal experience for teenagers and their parents.
MAN: All of a sudden you're in this holding cell and you're in here with 20 individuals. Guess what? If you have to go to the rest room, you're going to go to the restroom right here. There's no--do you see a wall here? There's no wall.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Most of these kids visiting the jail are what's termed "at risk," youngsters from single-parent homes, or from the projects, kids who may have skipped school a couple of times but so far have not done anything serious enough to be charged with a crime. So the state attorney's office takes them on a tour of the Duvall County Jail in hopes it will impress upon them how stark life behind bars can be.
MAN: And you're going to be able to walk with this outside this institution. I want you to feel how much this weighs, because these aren't light.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: They examine the "jewelry," a jailhouse term for hand and leg irons.
MAN: Go ahead and pass those down. And there's no way that you can sit there and try to break those or try to pick them. You think you're going to pick them?
BETTY ANN BOWSER: And they also meet with incarcerated inmates from the jail's sixth floor. It's all to hammer home the point that when a kid commits a serious crime in Jacksonville, chances are pretty good he will skip the juvenile system and go straight to adult court, and from there, straight to the Duvall County Jail, where all three of these boys under the age of 18 are doing six months to a year of hard time.
RICHARD: I guess I didn't learn from the first time when I had my other burglary charge, and I guess I'm payin' for it doing 10 months in Duvall County Jail.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Since 1991, state attorney Harry Shorestein has been trying violent juvenile offenders as adults by the hundreds. The result: Juvenile arrests are at their lowest point in a decade. Overall juvenile crime is down 30 percent, and violent crimes committed by juveniles have dropped by 50 percent. Shorestein wastes no time explaining his brand of juvenile justice to his visitors.
HARRY SHORESTEIN, Florida Attorney General: Where a lot of people feel that a teenager or a juvenile commits a crime, nothing will happen to them, in this jurisdiction, as you know, something will happen to you.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Florida leads the nation in the number of juveniles who are tried in adult courts, largely because of Shorestein's "get tough" policy in Jacksonville. More than 500 kids under the age of 18 have been tried and convicted as adults under Shorestein's tenure. A few have been sentenced to the state prison system, but most are sent to the Duvall County jail's sixth floor, where they're housed with other juvenile felons. Television and cigarettes are not allowed, but there is a recreation program and inmates attend school.
(COMMENCEMENT EXERCISE)
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Last summer, this home video captured the jail school's first graduation ceremony. Five boys received their diplomas. But most of the inmates do not finish high school while in jail. Mostly, they just do the time in what federal court monitors say may be one of the most dangerous teenage lock-ups in the country. Alonzo Lightsey is serving a year for a serious drug conviction.
ALONZO LIGHTSEY: It's hard. I haven't seen plenty of people get jumped on, get their head busted, and all that, but--
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Physically abused?
ALONZO LIGHTSEY: Yeah.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Sexually abused?
ALONZO LIGHTSEY: (nodding in the affirmative)
BETTY ANN BOWSER: So it's a grown-up place?
ALONZO LIGHTSEY: Yeah.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Even though you're kids.
ALONZO LIGHTSEY: (nodding in the affirmative)
BETTY ANN BOWSER: And it's a lot different from being in a juvenile detention facility?
ALONZO LIGHTSEY: Yeah.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Anthony Durst is doing a year for burglary and stealing a car.
ANTHONY DURST: Same thing happened to me. I got jumped on, you know, five or six people. They beat me up so, I just--I can't handle that so, I go to the box, you know, where no one messes with you.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Isolation?
ANTHONY DURST: Yes, ma'am. Juvenile programs, they're like, I don't know if I should say they're too easy or not, but I mean, whenever you get out of them, like my friends, they get out of 'em, they're back in the car, driving around the block, you know, just stole it, but whenever I get out of here, I know, you know, I'm not going to be back out stealing cars, 'cause I'm not coming back.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Are you saying that because you think that's what I want to hear, or because you really mean it?
ANTHONY DURST: 'Cause I mean it.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Do you have any problem knowing that sexual and physical assaults take place in your juvenile program, in your jail, where are 14, 15, 16 year old kids?
HARRY SHORESTEIN: We're not trying to suggest that the jail is a palace or a wonderful place to go. In fact, it isn't. It is an adult prison that truly does incarcerate 'em and take away their rights, and there are dangers in our juvenile-adult facility as there are in any confinement institution. We've continued to send the wrong message to these children. What we're telling them is that there are no consequences for criminal activity, and what'll happen is they'll continue to build a record that will not give them any punishment until the record essentially consumes them.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Rafael Williams is one of Shorestein's success stories. At the age of 15, he and four other older juveniles robbed a bank. It was his first offense. Still, he was tried as an adult and sentenced to one year in the Duvall County Jail.
RAFAEL WILLIAMS: It scares you. It shows you that the system doesn't play and you can't beat the system. I mean, people go to programs, they're going to think, hey, I can do this again, go to, go to a playground, a play camp for a couple of months and get out, but going straight to jail, I mean, that shows you had the system right there, right there with you.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Right in your face?
RAFAEL WILLIAMS: Right there.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Williams is currently a senior honors student at a Jacksonville high school. He plans to graduate in June, go on to college, and someday become a police officer. But chief assistant public defender Bill White says Shorestein's justice doesn't work for the majority of juveniles. His office represents most of the teenagers who get tried as adults.
BILL WHITE, Chief Assistant Public Defender: The maximum time they serve in that facility over there is a year, and that's just about enough time for them to pick up a lot of hints on how to do better burglaries and maybe how to eliminate a witness and maybe how to do a robbery without getting caught, how to defend yourself certainly, because they have to defend themselves against physical violence, against sexual violence. I don't know what the message ultimately is up there, but it's not scaring the kids, except the weak ones, and the weak ones come out of there, maybe say, I'm broken, my spirit's broken, my, my sense of self-worth is broken, I don't really have any, any desire to come back here, and maybe they won't. But the strong ones, they'll come back. It isn't--it isn't breaking the strong ones. It's making them tougher and meaner and probably better criminals.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: Shorestein's critics say many of the kids get out of jail and re-offend. A recent study by a Florida newspaper found 76 percent convicted as adults in 1993 were arrested on new charges or probation violations. But Shorestein says what counts is that there is less overall juvenile crime while the kids are incarcerated.
HARRY SHORESTEIN: Now that the word has gotten out the jail population of juveniles has dropped from 190 down to the lows 60's, so not only is juvenile crime down generally, with violent juvenile crime down substantially, the numbers that we're actually bringing into the system are declining significantly. I just don't see it. I don't see the quality of the charges being any different. I see the same types of people coming in. I don't see any of the underlying causes for these things going away, so it--I've just got some question in my mind that those figures really reflect what's going on in the community.
BETTY ANN BOWSER: So far, Jacksonville is the only major city in the country trying large numbers of juveniles as adults. But the practice is gaining popularity as violent juvenile crime figures continue to skyrocket.
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