Ensure Educational Opportunities
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Amend zero tolerance statutes
which mandate suspension or expulsion of children and/or
referral to the police for misconduct in school. Zero
tolerance should only apply to school conduct “that poses a
serious threat to school safety.”
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Educate teachers, school
personnel, police and school resource officers about the
short- and long- term consequences of arresting a child.
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Require children on school
“outdoor suspension” to attend a school-based program and
receive educational instruction during the suspension.
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Remove barriers to a college
education. Set time limits on college scholarship
ineligibility. Under current law, a person who has been
convicted of a felony, as an adult, is prohibited from ever
receiving Florida student financial assistance such as
grants or scholarships (e.g., Bright Futures).
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Remove Barriers to Employment
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- Facilitate rehabilitation by allowing automatic
restoration of employment rights to juveniles who have
completed their sentences and paid their debts to society.
- Authorize pardons and clemency for juvenile offenses.
Currently, juvenile adjudications or withholds on a felony
charge, no matter how old, preclude Floridians from
obtaining many business licenses.
- Establish juvenile clemency board to review pardon and
clemency petitions for juvenile cases and sentence
reductions for minimum mandatory and life sentences of
offenders sentenced for criminal acts committed before age
18.
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Strengthen Confidentiality
Protections
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- Make juvenile arrest records confidential and prohibit
their sale.
- Enter and maintain juvenile fingerprints, photographs
and arrest information in a non-criminal history database
until a plea or a finding of guilt by a judge or jury.
- Close the loophole that allows juvenile arrest records
to be obtained locally even when they have been expunged
from the FDLE database pursuant to Florida law.
- Automatically expunge juvenile records when juvenile
court jurisdiction ends, if the youth has no pending
juvenile or criminal cases and is not serving a sentence.
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Support Family Values
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- Allow child participation in the juvenile drug court
or in any other appropriate treatment or intervention
program without pleading or admitting guilt.
- Stop punishing parents for the behavior of their
children when parents have done nothing to promote the
delinquent behavior. Currently, parents are saddled with
court costs and fees in the delinquency cases of their
children, including costs and fees for housing the children
prior to a finding of guilt.
- Encourage familial bond and effective re-integration
into the community, by eliminating charges for local and
long distance telephone (collect) calls from children to
their family members, while housed in a juvenile facility.
- Require parental notification before police question or
arrest children in school.
- Require presence of a parent or attorney for the
child before police questioning.
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