New Bill Protects Kids In Prison
By Charles Savage
Originally published in The Miami Herald, May 4, 2001
TALLAHASSEE — If jurors should convict 14-year-old Nathaniel Brazill of murdering his West Palm Beach middle school teacher, the boy would have no contact with adult criminals until he turns 18, under a bill approved Thursday by the Florida Legislature.
The House of Representatives unanimously voted for a bill that directs the Department of Corrections (DOC) to house minors who are convicted as adults in a separate prison wing and to feed and exercise them away from older prisoners until they turn at least 18.
Administrators could choose to keep them apart until they turn 21, but could expel them into the general population early if they are a discipline problem under the bill, sponsored by Sen. Steve Geller, D-Hallandale Beach, and Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach.
The bill still must survive veto review by Gov. Jeb Bush. A governor's office spokeswoman, Elizabeth Hirst, said Bush has not yet taken a position.
"What we basically did was pass a truth-in-sentencing bill," Geller said. "If we want to sentence a child to be raped in prison, we should say so. We do not condone that in a civilized society."
The bill was requested by the West Palm Beach State Attorney's Office, which has prosecuted more minors as adults than any other district. But the conversation surrounding it was heavily influenced by two Herald projects.
Geller drew on a Herald report on the life of West Palm Beach's Tronneal Mangum after he was sentenced to life in prison for shooting and killing a 13-year-old classmate in 1997.
And Gelber, a former eight-year federal prosecutor, credited a two-part Herald investigative series that found that Florida's youngest inmates were also its most likely victims of reported assaults.
"The truth is, I think the Herald series made the case for this legislation," Gelber said. "I sent it to every committee that heard it and brandished it virtually everywhere I went."
The DOC houses about 70 underaged inmates who were convicted as adults, according to legislative staff statistics. The system also has about 40 minors who were transferred to the general population because of discipline problems, and who would therefore not be affected by the bill.
Earlier debate on the bill centered on the case of Lionel Tate, the Pembroke Park 14-year-old who was sentenced to life without parole for body-slamming 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick to death when he was 12.
After Tate's sentencing in March, the Department of Corrections took the highly unusual step of transferring Tate to a Department of Juvenile Justice prison, as Gov. Jeb Bush had urged. The announcement of the move was coincidentally made on March 13, the day that Geller's bill was first discussed in the Senate. The proposal originally called for all inmates younger than 18 to be housed in the DOC's "youthful offender" facilities, which are intended to rehabilitate people younger than 24 who are serving short sentences, with an emphasis on job training.
However, Sen. Rod Smith, D-Gainesville and a former prosecutor, objected to watering down the Youthful Offender environment by including anyone serving hard time, no matter how young.
Geller, Smith and state prisons chief Michael Moore worked out a compromise deal. Minors serving more than 10 years would be housed in adult prisons, but kept apart from the general population. If the convict is younger than 15, he or she could still be housed in a youthful offender prison.
Gelber's original bill was hobbled in the House by being assigned to more committees than it could pass through during the 60-day session.
But he salvaged the measure on March 20 by persuading Rep. James Harper Jr., D-West Palm Beach, to allow its substance to replace the language on a bill of Harper's that had only been assigned to two committees but appeared unlikely to pass for other reasons. "I'm very happy," Gelber said. "This session, there have been a lot of measures pass that were not so humane and not so decent. I think it's nice we were able to pass something that is decent and humane."
