Harsh Florida law sees more Black kids tried as adults than white kids
As a teenager, Naqwan Watson dreamed that playing football would allow him to escape his rough neighborhood in Miami Gardens. It had propelled his hero Chad Johnson from a tough upbringing in Liberty City to a Pro Bowl career with the Cincinnati Bengals.
But Watson’s hopes came to an end one afternoon in 2009.
Watson, then 16, and a friend forced their way into a Plantation home armed with a gun, fought with one of the residents and made off with a video camera and cellphone worth $575. It would cost him 20 years of his life.
Watson is one of thousands of children in Florida who have been tried as adults in the last three decades under a state law — “direct file” — that gives prosecutors unfettered discretion to remove children from the juvenile system and try them under the harsher penalties adult offenders face.
In 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that Florida’s “expansive” law played a major factor in making the state a “clear outlier” nationally in the rate of children tried as adults. At the time, roughly one in 10 children in the juvenile system were tried as adults.
While fewer kids today are moved to the adult system than at the time of the DOJ’s findings, the decline in these cases has not benefited all accused juvenile offenders equally, a Miami Herald investigation found.
Black kids like Watson make up a disproportionate — and growing — share of the children whose cases have been moved to adult court, according to the most recent 15 years of data available. The share of children transferred to the adult system who were Black has steadily ticked up from around 58% in 2008 to roughly 65% in 2022, the Herald found.
Adjusting for the type and number of charges children faced, the Herald found that Black kids were roughly two times more likely to be transferred to adult court than white kids.
Miami-Dade and Broward counties had the highest share of minority children charged as adults over the last 15 years.
Florida’s juvenile system, plagued with instances of excessive force, sexual misconduct, psychological abuse and inadequate medical care, is hardly a cakewalk. But it is still geared toward rehabilitation rather than punishment, legal experts told the Herald.
After conviction in adult court, minors typically have to deal with harsh prison conditions and the consequences of having a felony record for the rest of their lives. They are released into society as adults after spending crucial developmental years behind bars with limited access to education and training on the basics of how to live as independent individuals. They struggle to find jobs and housing, often end up committing offenses again – and the cycle continues.
Because children and teens are still developing reasoning skills, they are inherently less responsible for their behavior than adults, several psychologists said. Serving time in an adult prison, with its more punitive approach, can also harm their development and have a lasting impact on their ability to reenter society.
Between 2008 and 2022, Florida charged around 20,500 kids in adult court. Around half were charged with only nonviolent offenses. Three out of four of the children came from minority communities. Many are still serving their sentences.
“For young people who are in the process of development and haven’t fully learned social skills … this is an experience that damages their maturation,” said Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has spent more than four decades studying the psychological effects of incarceration.
“It’s a terrible idea to put a juvenile in an adult institution.”
