This article and others in this series were produced as part of a project for the University of Southern California Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship, in conjunction with the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Link to video depicted above.
Fight Club: Dark secrets of Florida Juvenile Justice
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
The boys had just returned to Module 9 of the Miami juvenile lockup from the dining hall when one of them hit Elord Revolte high and hard. More of the boys jumped in, punching and slamming him over and over, then pile-driving his 135-pound body.
One called it an “A-town Stomp,” and demonstrated to detectives by jumping on the floor with both feet.
Elord, 17, fought back gamely. “I swung a punch,” said the youth who struck him with the first blow. “I hit him. He swung two punches. He hit me. I swung one punch and then I grabbed his shirt and hit him again. Then I slammed him on his head and I hit him. … All my friends, they start jumping over the chairs, while Elord was on the floor and they went to stomping on him.”
When Elord rose from the 68-second thrashing — every kick and punch meted out in front of a surveillance camera — he was too angry to know his own hurt. He said all he wanted was to kill the boys who had brutalized him.
Thirty hours later, Elord was the one dead, the result of internal bleeding from that mauling, which two of the youths said was instigated by a detention officer.
Elord Revolte’s death evokes many of the dark secrets of Florida’s troubled juvenile justice system, including incompetent supervision, questionable healthcare, willfully blind internal investigations and spasms of staff-induced violence, sometimes bought for the price of a pastry.
The lack of accountability has left children in peril, unfit employees in charge and parents frustrated, frightened and sometimes grieving.
“They treated my child worse than a dog,” said Enoch Revolte, Elord’s father. “My child wasn’t a dog. My son deserves justice.”
He didn’t get it. No one was held to account.
Not the dozen-plus boys who ambushed Elord.
Not the detention officer identified by a detainee as ordering up the attack because Elord had mouthed off minutes earlier.
Not the nurses who waited a day to get Elord to the hospital as he oozed blood internally.
Not the administrators who failed, despite repeated warnings, to supply juvenile lockups with modern surveillance equipment.
Spurred by the death of Elord Revolte on Aug. 31, 2015, at least the 12th questionable juvenile detainee death since 2000, the Miami Herald embarked on a sweeping investigation of juvenile justice in Florida.
Reporters examined both state-run juvenile detention centers, essentially jails for kids ages 13 to 18 who are accused of crimes, as well as the state’s residential “programs,” prison-like institutions where they are sent by judges to serve sentences and receive treatment. The latter are privately run, but funded and overseen by the state.
Herald journalists examined 10 years of Department of Juvenile Justice incident reports, inspector general investigations and administrative reviews, restraint records, police files and court cases, state inspections, child welfare and prison records, emails, personnel files, surveillance video and handwritten witness and victims’ statements. They conducted scores of interviews with administrators, public defenders, prosecutors, judges, children’s advocates, consultants, parents and youths across Florida. They toured a half-dozen programs in two states and observed juvenile court cases.
The investigation found that for years — long before Elord’s death — youths have complained of staff turning them into hired mercenaries, offering honey buns and other rewards to rough up fellow detainees. It is a way for employees to exert control without risking their livelihoods by personally resorting to violence. Criminal charges are rare.
Of the 12 questionable deaths since 2000, including an asphyxiation, a violent takedown by staff, a hanging, a youth-on-youth beating and untreated illnesses or injuries, none has resulted in an employee serving a day in prison.
DJJ Secretary Christina K. Daly said her agency does not tolerate the mistreatment of youth in its care. “The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has been and continues to be committed to reform of the juvenile justice system in Florida. We have worked over the past six years to ensure that youths receive the right services in the right place and that our programs and facilities are nurturing and safe for the youths placed in our custody,” she said.
Summary of Findings
- Unnecessary and excessive force used by officers and youth care workers, who outsource discipline by using detainees as enforcers
- Sexual misconduct by staff that goes unreported
- Neglect of medical needs; teens were called “fakers” when they were ill
- Widespread tolerance for cover-ups
- Faulty security cameras
Problems in the System
Low pay, low morale, and poor working conditions were cited as contributing to problems throughout the Florida system. State pay for detention officers starts at $12.25 an hour. Many who are hired lack the proper experience to protect and supervise youths often dealing with mental illnesses, drug addiction, disabilities and the lingering effects of trauma. Put another way, annual salaries are in the area of $25,479.22 a year for a new recruit. The Legislature hasn’t addressed pay rates since 2006 — although it did give current staff a $1,400 raise on Oct. 1, 2017, starting salaries remained the same.
When Florida handed over its residential programs to private contractors, it gave up the ability to regulate pay for employees (unless stipulated in the contract). The contractor, TrueCore Behavioral Solutions, operates 28 Florida programs, more than any other company — it offers new hires $19,760.
Whereas many states insist that employment candidates have college degrees, Florida does not. Workers fired for wrongdoing in recent years have included a former brick mason, furniture salesman, mail sorter, sales rep, a machinist and a boxer. Many staffers share one trait: intimidating bulk.
Personnel screening is, likewise a problem. Individuals with records of violence and sexual abuse have not faced barriers to employment with the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice and its private agencies that operate residential compounds for kids.
The investigation found that hundreds of previously employed prison guards were hired, including individuals who lost their jobs for sexually abusive treatment of colleagues, “improper relationships” with inmates, smuggling in contraband and sleeping on the job.
Panhandle Purgatory
Florida’s youth corrections system has been a source of shame and scandal since its inception. The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, the state’s first reform school, was opened in the Panhandle in 1900 as a reform-minded experiment in “intellectual and moral training.” Three years later, boys were found chained in irons.
The state has been the subject of blistering grand jury reports, defended countless lawsuits, ramped up and slashed funding, designed and redesigned new programs — only to see the same abuses recur.
Despite the periodic outrages, those in the juvenile justice system have never gotten the same attention as abused and neglected children — although they are, in many cases, the same children, simply grown older and more damaged.
TrueCore, the private contractor, researched its detainee population. It reported that incarcerated girls are four times more likely than their non-delinquent peers — and boys three-and-a-half times more likely — to have experienced traumas such as abuse and neglect.
For generations, Florida juvenile justice programs were interwoven with the state’s child welfare system in a mammoth department called Health and Rehabilitative Services. The agency operated under a social services model, with foster care and delinquency programs governed by a child’s best interests. That philosophy remained in place even after delinquency programs were spun off in 1994.
But in 2000, the agency turned toward punishment when the Legislature approved an overhaul called “Tough Love.” As Florida grappled with a surge in violent youthful crime, a wave that jeopardized the state’s tourism lifeblood, the emphasis was on “tough.”
“We stopped seeing young people as somebody’s child, but rather as predators to be feared. And the way you deal with a predator is the opposite of how you deal with a child who has made a poor decision,” said Jim DeBeaugrine, an HRS legislative analyst from 1988 to 1997, and then staff director for the state Justice Appropriations Committee until 2007.
The 2000s saw two dramatic shifts: From 2008 until this year, the number of juveniles who entered the system’s custodial care plummeted from 41,002 to 19,491. The reduction coincided with a nationwide drop in youth crime, along with a 2011 Florida law — championed by DJJ — that encouraged police to issue civil citations to some nonviolent youthful offenders instead of arresting them.
At the same time, the Legislature privatized all juvenile justice commitment programs — the brick-and-mortar facilities where youths serve out their sentences. Daly, the DJJ secretary, says this outsourcing has led to greater efficiency and accountability, and more humane conditions.
A 2015 Polk County grand jury report following a riot at Highlands Youth Academy — named Avon Park at the time — saw it differently.
The riot started over a bet on a basketball game. The stakes: a packet of Lipton Cup-a-Soup. The losers refused to pay. Approximately 150 law enforcement officers were deployed, including a SWAT team. Sixty-one juveniles were arrested.
After examining the uprising at the program for boys with mental illnesses or drug addictions, the grand jury labeled it “disgraceful.”
“The buildings are in disrepair and not secured, the juvenile delinquents are improperly supervised and receive no meaningful tools to not re-offend, the staff is woefully undertrained and ill-equipped to handle the juveniles in their charge, and the safety of the public is at risk,” the report said.
The grand jurors noted that boys were running wild, living in buildings with leaky roofs — one still had a blue tarp — because they were never repaired after Hurricane Wilma a decade earlier. The report pointed out that British-based G4S, the for-profit company then running the youth program, had been paid $40 million over five years, including a 9 percent profit margin, or about $800,000 in profit that year alone, to run the camp.
“While the citizens are essentially being ripped off,” the report said, “the juveniles are being even more poorly served.”
G4S was sent detailed information about what the Herald was preparing to publish in this report. The company, which has spun off its juvenile contracts to TrueCore, a firm run by former employees, did not respond.
Fast Food and False Promises
Amid the downsizing, residential programs like Avon Park/Highlands — and the lockups, where youths await adjudication and sometimes scarce beds in the residential programs — have remained a source of trouble. The trouble ranges from improper “restraints” — forcible takedowns by staff — to ham-handed efforts to prevent detainees from reporting abuse.
Fort Myers Youth Academy has been a microcosm, steeped in violence and a culture of coercive cover-ups. The program was placed under a “corrective action plan” in September 2014 after it was found to be manhandling too many detainees.
Rather than stanch the abuse, the head of Fort Myers, Michael Mathews, went to extreme lengths to prevent it from being reported, DJJ inspector general records show.
Staffers told investigators they were forbidden from reporting anything to the state child abuse hotline without permission of administrators — a violation of DJJ policy, which mandates the reporting of abuse and requires that detainees have access to the hotline. Youths claimed they were pressured or bribed — one youth said with chips — to keep their mouths shut.
In April 2015, a 17-year-old clashed with Davis Rios, a youth care worker hired by Fort Myers after he was allowed to resign from his prison job. He’d initially been fired from the prison position for sexual harassment.
Rios swept the detainee’s legs out from under him, tossing him to the floor, wrote Christopher Geraci, a supervisor who witnessed it. Rios then bent the boy’s fingers backward and twisted his shoulder joint behind his back, “causing him to scream in pain.”
The youth had recently broken his jaw, and it was tender. Rios, exploiting the injury, gnashed an elbow into the teen’s wired jaw, eliciting a howl of pain, records show. The boy was “crying and begging Rios to stop.” The teen said Rios had “tried to break his arm.”
When it was over, the youth had his teeth knocked out of place, and his mouth dripped blood. He was sent to the emergency room with a shoulder injury, “multiple” deep bruises and internal bleeding.
Such “pain compliance” moves, permissible in adult prisons, have been banned by DJJ for more than a decade.
Geraci wrote a three-page report describing how Rios “became physically aggressive,” how he had done a “pain compliance technique on [the] youth’s fingers,” and how he’d twisted the teen’s shoulder, “causing him to scream in pain.” And it said he kept going even after Geraci ordered him to stop.
Mathews demanded a rewrite, Geraci later would tell investigators. The statement went from a three-page narrative to one paragraph devoid of detail. Geraci also refrained from calling the abuse hotline as mandated, later explaining: Staff “are prohibited from doing so.”
Mathews “offered no explanation as to why the Abuse Hotline was not contacted after medical documentation supported [Geraci’s claim] that staff Rios manipulated youth’s shoulder with the intent to inflict pain,” the report said. Nonetheless, a DJJ lawyer concluded that there was “no intent on his part to mislead the department.”
The episode remained buried for three months, until DJJ investigators came to Fort Myers to look into another takedown. Soon, more complaints surfaced, including a kid who suffered a dislodged tooth and possible “roof fracture” when he refused to give up his lunch tray, a youth who claimed he was yanked out of bed and beaten for oversleeping, and a report from a teen of “bounties” being offered for beatings.
On Oct. 23, 2015, an inspector general investigator wrote a report in which detainees described widespread abuse and frequent cover-ups. The program physician, Dr. Hala Fakhre, said she was told administrators dissuaded detainees from reporting physical abuse. A former staff nurse, Kandis Kelting, said she quit because of excessive violence and “youths being called liars.”
One boy said Mathews “bribed him with fast food … and false promises” — such as a reduced stay — to hide abuse.
“Things tend to get swept under the rug,” Geraci said in an inspector general report.
Those things included the surveillance footage of Rios’ April 2015 “pain compliance” restraint. Mathews didn’t preserve the video, later explaining that he viewed the video himself and saw “no excessive use of force.”
Rios was terminated in November 2015. Mathews was fired the following year — after he failed to report another restraint. Neither could be reached by the Herald.
The totality of complaints resulted in another “corrective action plan,” this one stipulating that the program report abuse “100 percent of the time.”
Turning a Blind Eye
For going on 20 years, investigators have been dutifully reporting concerns over the system’s outdated surveillance cameras. In July and August of 2000, two Miami-Dade officers were found to have beaten detainees with a broomstick. One boy was hurt, but in both cases the lockup “failed to ensure the video equipment was operating correctly, which prevented review” of the allegations.
The next year, an investigation into a Pinellas County girl’s injured shoulder was thwarted by inoperable cameras.
On June 9, 2003, 17-year-old Omar Paisley died of a ruptured appendix at the Miami-Dade lockup after begging for help for three days. A grand jury later complained that most of the video cameras weren’t working, and those that did “allowed only for real-time monitoring.”
Investigations into the deaths of two other youths, as well as the rape of a third, also were hamstrung by poor surveillance equipment. Shawn Smith, 13, hanged himself while under suicide watch in Volusia County. Daniel “Danny” Matthews, 17, died after being punched by another Pinellas County detainee. And a severely disabled 16-year-old was placed in the care of a sex offender, a detainee deputized to change his diaper. In that instance, the Tallahassee lockup’s tapes vanished before investigators could view them.
In some programs, the equipment was upgraded — but officers quickly learned the blind spots.
At the Okeechobee Youth Correctional Center, the “sub control” center, a glassed-in enclosure, is not covered by cameras, and the glass is darkly tinted. Police said that is where youth worker Mackell Williams brought a 15-year-old on Aug. 16, 2012, to beat him up.
A witness reported that Williams repeatedly punched the boy, then hoisted him in a “bear hug” and slammed him to the floor on his head. The 15-year-old crumpled and initially remained motionless. A co-worker told investigators she “thought the youth might have broken his neck.”
A detainee suggested that the teen needed medical attention, but workers “refused to notify anyone from medical,” a report said. One staffer dabbed the boy’s bloody head with napkins.
He was, in fact, badly hurt. The teen passed out in a classroom the next day from an apparent seizure and was diagnosed at a hospital with head and neck injuries. He returned to Okeechobee only to lose consciousness three days later — and then suffer another seizure the day after that.
DJJ and child abuse investigators concluded that Williams and two others had medically neglected the boy. They also determined that Williams had physically abused him. He was charged with misdemeanor battery.
Williams, six feet tall and stocky, wrote in a statement that the youth was the aggressor and he was “thrown around” by him while he begged the boy to “please let go.” He was acquitted four months later.
Managing the surveillance cameras throughout the juvenile justice system has long been a struggle, DJJ’s Daly said, forcing administrators to balance security needs against privacy rights. “You want kids to have the privacy in their room; you want them to have the privacy in the bathroom,” she told the Herald. She added that the agency can replace the equipment only as its budget allows.
“We are constantly replacing those cameras and the systems. There are a lot that are outdated, and we just have to prioritize and do them as we can,” Daly said. DJJ bought 135 cameras for its detention centers in June 2015 — along with new hard drives and other equipment — and another 100 security cameras the following May. About one-third of those were installed in Miami. Another 40 wide-angle cameras were installed in Miami later that year.
“It would be inaccurate to say DJJ does not take our facility safety seriously,” Daly said.
On a Scale of 1 to 10: ‘Twenty’
The Miami-Dade Regional Juvenile Detention Center cameras were working on the afternoon in 2015 when more than a dozen boys in Module 9 used Elord Revolte as a punching bag. But they weren’t working very well.
The lockup was Elord’s last stop in an odyssey that began at Miami International Airport. He ran away from the airport, fearing that his father was planning to take him to Haiti and leave him there. Elord ended up in a Miami Beach foster home. He ran away from there, too, and had been spotted by other foster kids smoking marijuana in South Beach. His foster mother reported him missing but said authorities didn’t seem interested.
“Nobody really cared,” said Jolie Bogorad.
They did care when, according to police, he and another youth took a man’s cellphone at gunpoint. Elord was arrested Aug. 28, 2015. In general, detainees are sent to the lockup for 21 days to await trial or release, though the time can be extended. Elord lasted three.
Enoch Revolte said he spoke with his son by phone not long before the attack. “He said, ‘Dad, I love you a lot.’
“I told him, ‘If you loved me, you would not be where you are.’ I was trying to practice tough love.”
Those words, among his last to his son, haunt him.
More haunting were the events late in the afternoon on Aug. 31. Elord “stood up without permission” in the lockup cafeteria to get a carton of milk, according to the police report. Detention officer Antwan Johnson told him to sit down. Elord cursed at Johnson, who cut dinnertime short for everyone.
One detainee, 16-year-old L.B., told police he overheard Johnson instruct another boy, T.R., to “punish [Elord] for his misconduct,” prosecutors wrote in a memo that identifies the juveniles only by their initials. “Johnson told the youth, [T.R.], to hit him,” L.B. said.
The boys from Module 9 returned from the dining hall at about 5:33 p.m. Policy dictated that they stand in front of their doors, but they milled around a set of blue plastic chairs in the dayroom, preparing to watch a movie. Video shows two officers present. Johnson is entering a closet. Boris Valcin walks away.
Neither is in position to see what happens next: T.R. slugs Elord in the jaw. Elord’s arms flail in the air.
Valcin continues to walk away when at least a half-dozen detainees leapfrog chairs and converge on Elord. Others join the attack. By the time Valcin turns around, Elord is swallowed by a blur of kicking khaki. Valcin radios a Code Blue, or fight. Johnson enters the scrum and begins to peel off one youth. All told, the assault goes on for 68 seconds.
“The guards was grabbing them and, like, throwing them,” 16-year-old T.R. told police, “but they kept coming back.”
“Stop!” Elord yelled. As staffers disengaged the remaining attackers, at least one stomped Elord’s chest a final time.
When it was over, Elord rose to his feet and declared: “I’m straight.”
Another detainee, D.V., would support L.B.’s claim that the assault was “induced” by a staffer, and said that the attackers were offered food and extra phone calls as rewards. He said he overheard the boys say so.
Elord was placed on concussion alert, and was supposed to be monitored for “repeated vomiting, dizziness, headache, visual disturbances, seizures, confusion, or unusual drowsiness.” DJJ’s inspector general said those instructions were disregarded. Indeed, “no staff had contact” with Elord for hours.
At 10:19 the next morning, Elord told an officer “his chest was stabbing him and he could not breathe.” A supervisor replied that Elord “already had submitted a sick-call.”
When the same officer checked on him later, Elord was “clutching his chest” and asked to see a nurse. The officer told him to be patient. A nurse said he’d be right over but never arrived.
At 3:40 p.m., shortly after shift change, staff called a Code White — medical emergency — and Elord was taken to the nurse’s station. He said he “felt like something was broken in his chest, and it was hard for him to breathe.” The staff did not call for an ambulance, and it took more than an hour for officers to arrange for a van.
Asked to describe his pain on a scale of 1 to 10, Elord replied: “Twenty.”
5:17 p.m.: Elord is checked in at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s emergency room. He says he has abdominal pain. He vomits.
10:40 p.m.: Elord stands over a garbage can and points toward his throat, unable to breathe. In full cardiac arrest, Elord falls into the arms of a nurse.
11:17 p.m.: Elord is pronounced dead.
The medical examiner catalogued his injuries — some overtly evident, some not. His left eye was bruised and swollen; he had an L-shaped scrape to the right side of his face, several red-brown scrapes and a purple bruise on his neck, and bruises to his shoulder. He bled from his thyroid, trachea, both lungs, adrenal gland, rib area and heart.
A tear to a vein under Elord’s left shoulder — which slowly oozed his lifeblood — was the cause of death, along with other “blunt force injury” to his head, neck and chest. It was “a highly unusual injury … more associated with a motor vehicle collision than a fight,” prosecutors quoted the medical examiner as saying.
Manner of death: homicide
The state attorney’s office cast about for someone to charge. Prosecutors considered Johnson, but concluded they couldn’t prove the officer ordered the assault, which he denied.
Nor, they determined, could the youths be prosecuted. Though investigators watched the kicks and punches unfold on the blurry, herky-jerky video, they could not say who delivered the fatal blow. Surveillance equipment was “significantly outdated,” prosecutors wrote. The cameras would need to capture 30 frames per second but recorded only seven.
When technicians tried to zero in, the images muddied. DJJ said it has upgraded the surveillance system.
The state attorney said the lockup’s shoddy record-keeping further complicated matters. The day log is unclear as to how many detainees were in the module. That complicated the task of identifying attackers and witnesses.
T.R. told investigators he punched Elord as payback for an earlier fight, though no such fight had been documented and prosecutors suggested he made that up. Multiple detainees acknowledged jumping in for no particular reason, but they weren’t charged with assault, much less homicide.
After itemizing the lockup’s “inadequacies,” the state attorney’s office concluded they were “beyond the scope of this memorandum, but must surely be addressed.”
In an interview with the Herald, Daly said DJJ has emphasized that detainees can never be deputized to enforce discipline. “I can tell you right now that it is absolutely unacceptable for any of that to happen. I have been very clear with our staff. We’ve had numerous conversations. That is not accepted. It is not an acceptable practice. Period.”
Inexplicably, the state attorney memo closing out the case says Antwan Johnson was terminated for unrelated matters. In fact, he remains on staff.
“These allegations were the subject of investigations by both the Inspector General’s Office of the Florida Department of Juvenile of Justice and the Public Corruption Unit of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. Neither of these extensive investigations found Mr. Johnson culpable in the incident,” DJJ said in a statement last week.
Reporters attempted directly and through the department to contact Antwan Johnson but did not succeed.
Revolte expressed shock when a reporter told him that no one would be punished for his son’s death.
“What do you mean?” he asked in Creole. “I cannot understand. This cannot happen. This cannot happen.”
T.R., who freely admitted striking the first blow in the savage attack, was soon freed.
Miami Epilogue
Because his initial explanation made no sense, the state attorney’s office intended to go back and interview T.R. one last time after his release. They thought he might feel freer to talk without fear of retribution by the detention center staff. But on Oct. 18, 2015, less than two months after Elord’s death, T.R. and a friend were shot while standing outside a Southwest Miami-Dade apartment. T.R. was wounded in the leg. The friend was killed. Prosecutors decided to let it go.
The Herald learned that the U.S. Justice Department subpoenaed records of some of the detention center staff involved in the incident, including Johnson.
At least one of the detainees present during the fatal beating was called to testify before a grand jury. Progress, if any, in that investigation is unknown.
T.R. is now in a Miami-Dade adult jail, charged with murder. Police say he shot 31-year-old Alquehen “Sean” Webb Jr., with a Glock .40-caliber handgun on Jan. 10, 2016, as the man sat in a car smoking marijuana. T.R.’s lawyer, Arthur Wallace, said it is a “weak case” and “there’s a good chance he’s completely innocent.”
T.R. is Tyvontae Robinson. He was never identified by name in the police, prosecutorial or juvenile justice records obtained by the Herald pertaining to the lockup brawl. Only his nickname — his handle in the lockup — was disclosed. Fellow detainees called him “Honey Smack.”
PostScript
The state claims juvenile arrests are at a 30-year low in Florida — but neglects to mention that crime overall is at a 30-year-low both state- and nationwide. The DJJ noted the Pew Charitable Trusts recently gave the Florida child detention system an award for implementing “evidence-based” programming to help reduce teen recidivism (Iannelli).
But the state’s claims of unfair reporting don’t hold up under the tiniest bit of scrutiny. Even if Florida ran the best juvenile prison system in America, that’s not good enough: In 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a statement demanding that “every youth prison in the country” be shuttered. After a litany of child rapes, beatings, and deaths in Florida, it’s not difficult to see why (Iannelli).
Sources
“Fight Club: Dark Secrets of Florida Juvenile Justice,” by Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch, Miami Herald, October 2017.
“After Herald Catches Prison Guards Running Child “Fight Clubs,” State Attacks Reporters,” by Jerry Iannelli, October 2017.
Questions
Beatings, rape, molestation, and the Florida justice system let almost every guard involved walk away free without consequences; judges continue to send juveniles into the system despite reported problems. What steps do you think might be taken to bring reforms to the juvenile justice system in Florida?
What about other states? How might citizens ensure institutional accountability for adhering to laws and practices governing custodial care of juveniles?
I think that the one big step to reform the juvenile justice system in Florida is having more government oversight. They need to hire more people who will follow the rules and understand that letting juveniles do whatever they want is not allowed. They have to hire more strict staff and hire staff members that will not promote violence between the juveniles. Granted that juveniles are locked up because they have done something wrong, it does not mean that they can be treated as animals or adults. They are in there because they need supervision and they need to be under control and the only way one can do that is if they have the qualifications and do not do it for the pleasure or money. Another step is to let the juveniles get the care they need. Yes, there are many juveniles that take advantage of it but if a juvenile has been beaten up, I think that he or she would have all the right to be able to see a doctor.
The fact that juveniles were used as a form of entertainment by the people that were supposed to be protecting them is despicable. Along with beatings, rapes, and molestation, the youth who should have been receiving protection and rehabilitation are now neglected even further. Despite problems being reported, judges continued to send troubled youth to juvenile detention centers. I think that a possible contribution to this issue is the low wages of the correctional officers. At roughly $12.50 an hour, surely there will be a low reach of possible recruits and the people that do apply will most likely lack proper skills to deal with children of this type. With higher wages, Florida could draw in more “attractive” employers. Another issue that contributed to this unlawful behavior is the lack of supervision and accountability. The guards must be held responsible for what they do, children have died because they failed to do their job, they encouraged them. The faulty security cameras didn’t help either, and with a proper investigation and surveillance, a difficult problem could be solved fairly easy.
The justice system in Florida should take into consideration getting new staff that are trained and equipped to handle the job correctly. Steps like an monthly investigation on the juvenile justice programs should be in effect. Someone needs to be checking to make sure everything is run correctly with no mistreat of any of the juveniles. Nothing can be done about the irresponsibleness of these detention centers if no one speaks up. There needs to be all a thorough check on every staff member to assure they meet qualifications. If the justice system in Florida would provide their employees with training and better decision making skills a lot of the violence by staff would eliminate. In other states citizens can make sure they work with the community more to help with re-offending juvenile delinquents to not be put back into those detention centers. Every state should make sure all staff in the juvenile justice department are qualified and cameras are working at all times.
The fact that both the state of Florida and the facilities are not punishing these guards is outrageous. Seeing as how the state said Johnson was let go, but turned out to still be employed is rather ridiculous to me. If someone who is responsible for the orders of an assault on a detainee, they should be prosecuted whether or not they say it is true or false. We should be taking the words of the detainees seriously even though they have committed offenses they should still be heard. The DJJ should not allow for anyone who has a documented history of aggression on their record to be allowed to work in a detention center or any part of corrections. They should also make sure that applicants and new recruits go through a special training that allows them to find an outlet for when they are disrespected by a detainee. Employees of these detention centers should not be allowed to give demands to detainees that allow them to beat up another detainee. The DJJ needs to also find a way to better record things that happen, like if T.R. and Elord did in fact get in a fight before, there should have been adequate records to prove so.
The Florida Justice System has somehow become corrupt and it seems to keep making a turn for the worst. The reforms that need to be made are the over watch of the Juvenile system guards. These guards are destroying youth and are actually getting kids killed. They need to be on constant watch to ensure that youth are no longer tantalized and beaten for no proper cause. Also the current guards need to be moved to a different facility where the Warden is stricter! Other states should enforce laws more in the Juvenile Detention Centers so that incidents like the Miami Flight Club does not happen again. Citizens could become more involved in the Juvenile delinquents and try to help them to stop committing crimes.
Reading about the mistreatment of children and teenagers like this angers me. Just because the child is in a detention center, does not make them any less of a person. It only makes them more vulnerable to taking bribes from officers that are in charge of their care. Sexual and physical assault on any person should never be covered up, especially when it is on an impressionable, vulnerable, child. This is absolutely a gross misuse of power. It continues because everyone keeps getting away with it. Who would a judge believe, a justice system college or a kid locked up for robbing a store? Their past crimes should not discredit them from being able to launch an investigation on an unfair act. These acts are being covered up from inside the prisons and the juveniles that are being detained are being bribed to keep quiet with fast food and empty promises of earlier release dates. These kids are expected to be renewed citizens when they leave the detention center they are in: how is that even potentially possible when they are being traumatized and experiencing more Adverse Childhood Experiences than they would at home? They are basically guaranteeing the return to jail of these juveniles that may not have disobeyed the law again had they not been abused. Abuse by an officer is just as bad as absuss encouraged and ordered by an officer. It is insane to think that people get pleasure out of seeing young kids beat each other up while they are at work. It is definitely a power hungry move that ends up negatively impacting everyone they are supposed to be caring for. There should be more investigations launched on accusations or even assumptions of misconduct by officers on juveniles. These investigations should be done by an outside source after they take all of the people involved’s statements. It would need to be someone without bias so they would not lean toward the officer just because of the juvenile’s current situation. Mistreatment of children in the juvenile justice system has been covered up and not paid attention to long enough, these children need justice and preventative measures need to be taken for their futures.
The article shows crime around Florida’s juvenile justice system. Even describing the death of Elord Revolte , which points out dark secrets of Florida’s troubled juvenile justice system, including incompetent supervision, questionable healthcare, willfully blind internal investigations and spasms of staff-induced violence. Florida’s juvenile system needs to be organized and mindful of situations like beatings and death. The government needs to take action on this and not let it go unnoticed. Juveniles are more likely to trust the juvenile system if they know the system cares and things like this won’t go unnoticed.
I think the only way that reforms will come to the system in Florida which has continued to fail juveniles is when the judges who are continuing to send juveniles to these places are gone and new ones sit on the bench. If new judges will stop sending juveniles to these detention centers then they will start to fail, forcing them to clean themselves up or go out of business.
That sounds like a great idea to me!
I think that there is a lack in professionalism as well as a complete failure in Florida’s Juvenile Justice System. This is sad and disgusting to think that correction officers would instigate a fight between 2 inmates. The juvenile system is set for them to rehabilitate and learn form their decisions and try to find a life without crime. The fact that someone died is unacceptable.
When reading this, it discusses all the problems occurring in Florida’s Juvenile Detention Centers. It is terrible to read about what these detention officers have done to these children. In the beginning it talks about how an officer set up at attack on one of the children. The officer would offer something to a kid if that kid would go beat up someone. The children of the beginning of the reading, died of internal bleeding. There were so many problems happening, which another one was their outdated surveillance systems.
The article clearly demonstrates corruption around Florida’s Juvenile Justice system. Importantly, Florida’s Juvenile system has to hire more educated employees. In addition, once they start hiring better suited employees, the paying salary has to be good. Because as the article states, employees getting paid around $12 an hour is not enticing to other qualify candidates. To add, the juvenile system in Florida also needs to be held responsible for incidents like the one that occurred to Elord Revolte. Florida’s Juvenile system must be organized and aware of situations such as beatings and deaths. Thus, how can juveniles trust and care for the juvenile system, if the system does not care at all or held accountable for its actions.
I feel like this incident could be tied into the other article about the judge and the juveniles. I see this as the faculty in this facility is there to keep and eye and guide these juveniles to a better lifestyle for once they get out. A lot if not all of this could have been avoided, but I remember reading it even took the nurse like up to a day to see someone while that person had internally bleeding. That is just outright ridiculous in this world today. I believe a better screening or hiring process needs to be in place for the future of this facility and the rest of the facilities where things like this fight club is taking place.
Similar to the case involving the judges in northeastern PA, one of the possible causes of this issue could be the privatization of the juvenile facilities. The article mentioned that new hires in these private facilities will get about 19k a year, which is certainly very low. An excuse for such low wages could be the lacking qualifications of those being hired by the prisons. For example, some employees were formerly furniture salesmen and mailmen. Unlike most other states, a college degree was not required for the position. Obviously, it is very upsetting that it took multiple suspicious deaths for any changes to be made. The DJJ in Florida says that they care about the kids, but apparently not enough to ensure proper care for the kids. Most facilities admitted the most of the cameras do not work and are often not working properly. Perhaps updating the surveillance equipment would help hold employees responsible for their actions as well as ensure proper treatment of the juveniles in these facilities.
I think the majority of the problems in these systems comes back to the employees that are hired. Most of them are not qualified for this work and are not paid enough to care that much about the work. I find it disturbing that grown men could care so little that they get kids to do their dirty work through bribes or false promises for them that could possibly end in death. The one grand jury report described it well saying how its disgraceful that the kids are improperly supervised and receive no meaningful tools. And of the questionable deaths that occurred over the past years, they said nobody has been punished and I find that very questionable.
As we have already talked about many times in class, it is super evident that the pay grade is too low for those individuals who work inside jails and juvenile facilities. I think one of the things that should be done to work towards gaining reform within the Florida juvenile justice system would be to raise the pay of employees who work within these systems. As well as raising the pay, we should raise our expectation for them and hold them more accountable for the juveniles they are expected to supervise. We should also work towards reform by giving these individuals better training and resolution skills. Instead of having fellow kids beat up another juvenile because he “mouthed off”, there should be better ways to work towards the issue of getting the juveniles to show respect towards the guards. Many of the kids in the system have built up anger, which us often how they ended up in the system in the first place. Respect is a big thing for many of these juveniles. You can not expect them to respect guards and follow order if they do not feel some type of mutual respect from the guards. I also think a way to reform these issues would be adding security camera to more areas and making sure they work at all times. Research has shown as learned in our American Policing class that red light camera reduce the amount of drivers who run red lights. I think it would be a similar effect in the juvenile systems. If we implement more cameras, less juveniles and guards would be willing to commit acts/offenses they know they could be easily proven by watching camera evidence.
After learning and reading about The Miami Fight Club goes shows how corrupt the criminal justice system is. A faculty like this should be rehabilitating and reforming juveniles, not having kids fight one another to discipline them. As a mother myself, it angers me. As a parent you’re sending your child there to help them. Not knowing what is happening behind close door. Everyone involved should be held accountable.
The article reveals how Florida’s Juvenile Justice system is dark and twisted. There have been several instances where the juveniles are being mentally and physically abused. For example, Elord Revolte was one of the victims in the detention center who was being hurt by a group of boys. As a result, the boys killed Revolte and they were not being held accountable. Another problem that rises within the juvenile justice system has to do with the detention officers. For the most part, the officers do not have the proper experiences to withhold a job in that field. If some of the kids suffer from a mental illness or a drug addiction, how can an inexperienced officer properly handle a disruptive juvenile. Without the proper education, officers will just be violent and not be able to deescalate a situation. Sometimes knowing how to talk to the kids is all it takes to settle a dispute or a fight.
The Miami Fight Club is a great example for what it is like in corrupted facilities. It is terrible that correctional officers “hire” juveniles within the facility to cause trouble/fight other juveniles that they don’t like and then reward them with food. That’s the problem with some juvenile facilities, hiring officers that honestly do not meet the standards or have the proper training to run them. The fact that Elord died from internal bleeding due to being jumped by a group of juveniles with no supervision is terrible. This facility gives the justice system a bad reputation. The top priority in these facilities should be to get these juveniles help and that starts with having proper training and a hiring process for these officers to supervise them.
This was a very depressing article to read, with many issues that should have been dealt with a long time ago. First question I have while reading this article is that these juveniles are in a detention center why are they not being closely monitored that they are able to start a fight and stomp one kid in without security interfering. and the simple fact that no one was held accountable for this child’s death is absurd. The detention officer should have been held accountable because he was supposed to keep those boy in line and most important safe. When sending your child to a detention center you are sending them there hoping they are rehabilitated not killed. The detention officer should be held accountable because these children where comfortable with abusing other children with showed that he allowed these children to commit these acts on a daily basics. As the article stated long before Elord’s death — youths have complained of staff turning them into hired mercenaries, offering honey buns and other rewards to rough up fellow detainees. It is a way for employees to exert control without risking their livelihoods by personally resorting to violence. Criminal charges are rare. The detention officer could have told these children to do this to Elord and they would not be any consequences. A detention center that is not reforming juveniles is only making them worse, and is setting them up to be in the adult system once they are out of the detention center. This center should have been close a long time ago, because they hired individuals who lost their jobs for sexually abusive treatment of colleagues, “improper relationships” with inmates, smuggling in contraband and sleeping on the job. These workers should not have been about minors. These children were supposed to get help but instead they were used and abused and many of them left there and were probably traumatized.
When reading and learning about the Miami fight club, it gave me time to reflect on quite a few issues that arise in the corrections part of criminal justice. One issue that is very prevalent is the accountability of the staff hired in these facilities. It makes me curious about these facilities hiring processes and how they decide who to hire. It makes me wonder about interview questions and how these questions are supposed to reflect these facilities mission statements as well as their codes of ethics. It appears to me that the standards of hiring are very low and the expectations of staff are low as well, considering how the article in detail describes all of these instances of abuse. As discussed in class however, another issue in these facilities might be the pay of the workers. It seems that workers in these facilities are not being paid enough to care about the well being of these kids, and when the workers get bored, they appear to use the kids as entertainment. I do not know this but it could be possible that a better pay would make them take their job more seriously. There are also many more ways to prevent this treatment such as more transparency and utilization of technology in these facilities as well as more interaction between the children and their parents or guardians would help as well.
the Miami fight club reminds me of a movie, but to really find out that this is happening everyday somewhere in our country is outrageous. in my eyes you can’t put the blame on the youths because they are here to get help and become reformed. don’t get me wrong i don’t think that them killing the officer was right, but i think that if they were never treated like animals this probably would have never happened. the only way to fix these types of acts is to hold everyone accountable, and to set more rules and guidelines to be followed.
The Miami Fight Club article is a great way to show our system for juveniles is far from perfect. Guards allowing kids to beat up on one another for a little acting out is no exception. It even led to the death of Elord Revolte. It wasn’t even just the guards it was everyone on that shift that day in this facility failed him too. Even the nurse didn’t help him get to the hospital right away by calling in an ambulance. Instead they worked on getting a van ready killing more crucial time for Elord. We need to stop this now. We need to have more supervision on staff and better check ups to make sure every officer is doing the right thing. This horrible act was definitely avoidable and breaks my hear to here the system truly failed him.
A facility like this is supposed to help rehabilitate youth that are sent there. Parents are trusting the justice system to help their child, but some didn’t realize that it was the last time that they were going to see their child. When I read about Elord being killed, it angers me because the whole time it could have been completely avoided. It wasn’t just the guards fault, but it said that it took a nurse a full day to even see him while he had internal bleeding. The article also said that it was in front of surveillance cameras, but still, no one stood up at the time of the beating to help stop. The officers should be held responsible especially because they are children. Children are immature as it is, and when egged on to beat someone because they mouthed off just shows the immaturity of the guards. The fight club does not surprise me though. The more and more stories to come will not surprise me either. Our CJS system has its flaws, and this is a big one. It’s sad that this story comes out after the damage has already been done, meaning a child has been killed. There is a responsibility that is not being upheld which is very disappointing.
Events like this are when the government should keep a close eye on the institutions and staffing. Cleary they are getting the wrong people for the jobs since they have no intentions of helping the juveniles that are in the system. The salary for the people working in these centers could also have an impact on because they are getting paid less and that’s when the caring becomes less and it could also encourage the staff members to do things like fights and setting bounties on the inmates to make their job more exciting. The institution is supposed to be a safe place for the juveniles while they are doing their time but instead, they are being beaten and harassed by the people overseeing them. The crazy part about this is that some of these incidents that happen go unreported. More protection should be enforced in these institutions for the juveniles that are in there. The government needs to take more action on this and not let it go unnoticed.
I believe many juvenile facilities are just like the fight club in ways such as the staff. I honestly think that many officers or juvenile supervisors are very abusive towards the kids because they know the juveniles have no authority and most likely whatever they would complain about or report to upper officials, would probably lead to no action being taken anyways. Something that can be changed is the supervision on these centers, hiring more people who actually care about the youth and their future, not ones who want to make their lives worse. The kids are in the juvenile detention centers because they did something wrong already, and it seems the employees just want to see the kids do worse as they add more stress and more problems into their lives. As well as hire employees who have the proper experience, in the article it said the staff were people with no experience, how could we expect people with no experience and no training to do a job that isn’t so simple? They can’t…
The fight club shows that we seriously need to keep an eye on the staffing that we have in charge of these juveniles with in the system. It shows unnecessary and excessive force used by officers and youth care workers, who outsource discipline by using detainees as enforcers. As well as sexual misconduct by the staff that goes unreported, there is negligence of medical needs for the youths who were called “fakers” when they were ill. But, most importantly, there was a widespread tolerance for cover-ups and faulty security cameras. A teenager died in their care because as stated in the text many who are hired lack the proper experience to protect and supervise youths often dealing with mental illnesses, drug addiction, disabilities and the lingering effects of trauma.This is a problem that need to get fixed.
I think the steps that need to be taken to be able to reform the juvenile justice system in Florida are stricter guidelines in for the government when it comes to hiring officers to work in the detention centers so that each person hired doesn’t show any favoritism towards certain juveniles in the system. The people hired should also have high standards of professionalism in while being on the job and not making certain juveniles fight and end up beating to death other juveniles. Those people in other states should have the same type of regulations for working in the system especially with juveniles. The parents and citizens as well as the government should be able to work together to prevent things like the fight club from happening. The government overall should have check ins with the correctional officers that are placed in the juvenile detentions centers to make sure nothing is happening between the guards and juveniles and the juveniles and juveniles. The detention center should also allow meetings with parents of those children in detentions and those not in the system to say what they think needs to be done about making sure the youth don end up killed by certain people in the centers. Those facilities that have guards who have violated rules of the prison and the government should be held responsible for their actions and be terminated. I think guards that are not only in juvenile detention center but in regular prison facilities should take the training that educates them on professionalism in the work place so nothing else happens like the fight club.
One of the main issues – though many – is the incorporation of private for-profit prison systems especially for juvenile offenders. Another is the miserably poor salary of the staff in these institutions, which encourages staff to make up for that through the entertainment of the inmates: inciting fights, setting bounties for beating certain inmates, physically abusing the inmates, and denying them the appropriate medical resources. Certainly, a much more comprehensive screening must be conducted for hiring staff in the first place as well. Some form of oversight must be performed on some regular basis and policies that forbid staff from reporting abuse must be disbanded. Moreover, the grouping of staff and inmates into “us” and “them” groups, staff look at the children as less than humans and less worthy of basic resources to ensure their safety and well-being.
I’m not shocked but I’m disgusted and disappointed that this sort of “fight club” happens in general let alone in jail. Juvenile’s parents are sending their children to jail thinking they will do their time and are to be trusted and feel safe around officials. In the case of Elord, no one cared enough to check on him. Not the nurses who even waited a full day as a he was oozing blood to be sent to the hospital. This is shameful, I do not understand how you can be in a occupation to serve people and not fulfil your duty. I would think we as a society can learn from situation like this. But it seems stories like this pop up and get swept under the rug. As to the question of what steps I think should be taken to reform the juvenile justice system in Florida, it’s complicated. I don’t think I have the right solution for this. However one thing we can do is actually train the staff in these facilities to be able to handle juvenile delinquency better. One of the problems is that the staff who is hired have no idea how to protect or even supervise a youth who is dealing with mental illnesses, or a drug addiction. This should be a qualification if you are going to be dealing with children.
I think the main reforms that need to be made in the Juvenile Justice system in Florida is more government oversight. This would mean that the government would have to renegotiate their agreement with DJJ in order to better regulate who is being hired and that those who are working and are implicated in any kind of behavior such as violence and promoting violence among detainees are properly dealt with. The private organizations on their own are to obsessed with number and money and therefor do not have the capability to have complete control over the system. Other states could learn from this by making sure that government is truly taking care of and overseeing these facilities. Similar to in the case of “cash for kids” the need for oversight needs to pushed for by the parents/ citizens so that the government will realize the need for them to be involved otherwise the issue of the forgotten population will continue. In that situation the issue would have persisted had parents not called attention to it and it is the same thing that needs to continue in order for proper oversight and protection to be enforced.