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Reprinted from the Miami Herald
Public
defenders want chains out of juvenile courts In what may be the first barrage in a coordinated effort in South Florida, the Miami-Dade Public Defenders' Office called upon juvenile court judges Monday to end the chaining of youthful offenders in court, calling the practice a ''degrading'' affront to the Constitution and damaging to the youths' mental health. In motions filed on behalf of about a dozen teens arrested over the weekend, Public Defender Bennett H. Brummer claimed that handcuffing and shackling children in court violates their right to due process and interferes with their ability to communicate with their lawyers. Some youths wait up to four hours in a holding area at the courthouse with their hands cuffed and their legs bound by metal chains. They ''shuffle'' into court, as the 16-inch shackles make it impossible for them to walk, the motion says. ''The handcuffing and shackling of children can cause them serious mental and emotional harm, and undermine the Court's very objectives in preventing delinquency or rehabilitating a delinquent child,'' the motions said. In Brummer's first test, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge William Johnson agreed Monday to allow most youths to appear before him without handcuffs or shackles. ''I have always said [juveniles] should not be chained in my courtroom,'' said Johnson, one of four juvenile court judges in Miami. ''I have always disagreed with the position'' of the state Department of Juvenile Justice. Officials with DJJ declined to discuss in detail the public defender's motions. In a prepared statement, Cynthia Lorenzo, DJJ Secretary Anthony Schembri's safety and well-being of the public. Youths transported by DJJ detention staff are placed in handcuffs, waist chains and ankle shackles. ''Some juvenile offenders have committed very serious crimes, including murder and armed robbery, and it is the agency's responsibility to minimize their risk of escaping. Inside courtrooms, some juvenile judges instruct staff to remove the restraints, and DJJ staff comply as directed,'' Lorenzo added. One of the juveniles who appeared in court before Johnson on Monday was a 13-year-old named Omar. Omar's arrest report lists him as five-foot-three and weighing 100 pounds. He was arrested Sunday by Miami Beach police on loitering and prowling charges, after officers said they found him ''hiding'' in bushes near an empty lot not far from the Venetian Causeway. Omar and another juvenile ''had no ID, did not live in the area, and [their] actions raised concern for the safety of people and property in the area,'' a police report said. Prosecutors dropped the charges against Omar after he spent Sunday night at the Miami lockup. Also in court was Chanel, a 16-year-old girl with no prior arrests who was charged with domestic violence after getting into an altercation with her mother. In testimony before the judge, Chanel's aunt said the teen had been repeatedly abused by her mother. ''She's not the aggressor,'' the aunt said. Before Monday, both Omar and Chanel would have been cuffed and shackled in court. But after Johnson's ruling Monday afternoon, Juvenile Justice guards unlocked the cuffs and shackles before escorting the teens into the courtroom. Marie Osborne, Miami's chief assistant public defender in juvenile court, said her office will ask the three other juvenile judges -- Lester Langer, Roger Silver and Douglas J. Chumbley -- today to follow Johnson's lead. In a sworn statement included in the public defender motions, Dr. Gwen Wurm, who heads Jackson Memorial Hospital's medical foster care program and teaches public health, said chaining delinquent children -- many of whom are not violent -- encourages them to ''distrust'' the system that is supposed to help them. ''The policy of subjecting all children and adolescents in the juvenile system to shackling without regard to their age, gender, mental-health history, history of violence or risk of [running away] goes against the basic tenets of developmental pediatric practice,'' Wurm wrote. ``All children are not the same.'' ''A picture of someone shackled is meant to convey a sense of danger, of a contained beast,'' Wurm wrote. ``This image is frequently utilized in movies and television. It is a picture of someone feared. An adolescent with a forming identity cannot easily shrug off this image of himself; rather, it becomes integrated in his own identity.'' Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein said his office would be ''moving expeditiously'' to file similar motions in juvenile court, as well. In Fort Lauderdale, he said, accused delinquents are escorted through public areas of the courthouse in chains before they go to court. ''These are children, and we are treating them like wild animals,'' Finkelstein said. ``It is disgraceful, it is inhumane, and we should all be ashamed for allowing children to be handcuffed and shackled and led through public hallways to be disgraced and humiliated.''
© 2006
MiamiHerald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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