A Miami Herald investigation found that judges are giving teens transferred to adult courts higher sentences on average for felony crimes than older, adult offenders, according to a Miami Herald investigation. Florida is one of 13 states that give prosecutors unfettered power to try children as adults without getting sign-off from a judge. When Florida judges try teenage offenders, they have the option to give them “juvenile sanctions,” which send them to a juvenile facility rather than prison, or classify them as “youthful offenders,” resulting in either probation or being confined at a camp with other convicted young adults for up to six years. But only one in 10 of the more than 20,000 children tried as adults in Florida were given juvenile sanctions and less than 5% received a “youthful offender” designation, the Herald found in an analysis of the last 15 years of state court system sentencing data from 2008 to 2022.
The Herald’s findings are “very, very disturbing,” said Lynn Tepper, a former family court judge in Florida’s Sixth Judicial Circuit. Tepper said it is incumbent upon judges to find out the context behind a child’s offenses and to keep in mind that punishing children with prison time only increases their likelihood of becoming repeat offenders. Children tried as adults were sentenced to a little more than three years in prison on average for third-degree felonies — around 50% longer than the average sentence given to adults for the same class of offense, the Herald’s investigation found. Overall, a child tried as an adult was sentenced to a little more than five years for a felony charge while an adult received around three-and-a-half years. These trends held even after the Herald adjusted for the most extreme sentences that could skew the figures.
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