By Vinnie Giordano, PhD
During the COVID-19 pandemic, states have faced unique challenges maintaining the health and safety of adult and juvenile offenders.
Concerns about exposure of first responders to the coronavirus has changed how the justice system addresses both juvenile and adult offenders. In Florida, many of the state’s law enforcement agencies made changes to the arrest procedures for all offenders. One significant change to how Florida law enforcement addresses offenders is that arrests for minor offenses have ceased. As an alternative, law enforcement are writing a notice to appear for those who would typically be brought to jail facilities for these crimes.
The courts have equally followed suit in trying to reduce the potential exposure of large individuals to COVID-19. In most counties, the courts have significantly reduced their activity. Presently the courts are only seeing first appearance and bail hearings, juvenile detention hearings, injunction hearings such as domestic violence, Risk Protection Order (RPO) hearings, and Baker Act and Marchman Act involuntary commitment proceedings. The goal of these reduced hearings is to ensure that fewer people are potentially exposed to COVID-19 to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
While the courts and law enforcement have done significant work to eliminate potential exposure to COVID-19, the greatest concern has been how to reduce the spread to those sitting in the state’s jails, prisons and juvenile detention centers.
At the adult level, it appears that the state of Florida has had a mixed response to addressing COVID-19. Some counties such as Hillsborough and Lake County opted to release low-level, non-violent offenders from the county jails with orders to attend their next court appearance. This has resulted in Hillsborough County releasing 164 offenders and Lake County releasing 44 offenders.
Outside of the adult corrections system, there is a rising concern as to what is occurring with those involved in the juvenile justice system. As mentioned before, there has been no suspension of juvenile detention hearings in the state’s court system, or general release of low-risk children from their detention centers.
The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice’s (DJJ) Office of Health Services developed COVID-19 guidance for all facilities serving DJJ youth. This guidance included CDC criteria on how to assess and care for youth who are exhibiting fever and respiratory symptoms and environmental cleaning and disinfection recommendations. However, the Miami Herald reported that the Department of Juvenile Justice has been rather vague in providing more information to the judges and public defenders who raise questions about the nature and scope of DJJ’s policy and its execution. These concerns seem valid as recently at least one employee at the Broward Youth Treatment Center was confirmed positive for COVID-19.
On March 29, DJJ issued a statement that all visitations to juvenile facilities were suspended until April 15, 2020. This suspension of visitation has since been modified. As of August 20, DJJ has stated it is resuming limited family visitation to facilities that have no active COVID-19 cases. Presently according to DJJ, there have been 295 staff and 319 youth who have tested positive since the beginning of the pandemic. Furthermore, only six facilities in Florida meet the criteria to allow some sort of visitation. While it is reassuring to see that some facilities can allow visitation, most cannot. The current situation must be highly concerning to the families of the children being detained. It is conceivable that the pandemic will continue well into 2021. Because of this, there needs to be an examination as to how to protect both the interests of the community and the best interests of the parents and the children being held in detention facilities.
Because of the unique circumstances associated with the pandemic, both adult and juvenile facilities must move away from the status quo and seek to release non-violent or low-risk offenders. This is especially true for the children being held in detention facilities throughout the state. The prospect of keeping these children from their families while potentially exposing them to a virus whose severity we have not seen since 1918, could have a catastrophically.
NEXT: How Juvenile Assessment Centers serve the criminal justice system
About the author
Vinnie Giordano, PhD, is an adjunct professor at Grand Canyon University, where he chairs and supervises doctoral dissertations. Prior to working in academics, Dr. Giordano was the Administrator of the Pinellas Juvenile Assessment Center and the clinical supervisor at the Pasco County Juvenile Assessment Center. Dr. Giordano’s experiences in the field of criminal justice and human services span over a 20-year period.