Florida Boot Camps are Exempt from the Review of State Child Abuse Investigators

 
Though a surveillance video played around the country shows guards punching, kneeing and choking Martin Lee Anderson (Pictured above) before he stopped breathing at a Panama City boot camp, Florida child abuse investigators are not looking into whether the boy died from abuse or neglect. That's because both child welfare and juvenile justice administrators are interpreting one sentence in state law as granting Florida's five juvenile boot camps an exemption to requirements that all suspected or alleged child abuse be reported to the Department of Children & Families' abuse hotline. The boot camps are the only programs under contract with the Department of Juvenile Justice that are not required to report suspected abuse to DCF's hotline. They also are the only DJJ programs that are allowed to investigate abuse claims themselves. Chelly Schembera, a retired Florida social service administrator with extensive child welfare, juvenile justice and inspector general experience during 27 years with DCF, said "this is a license to commit police brutality at will,'' she said. Ray J. Thomlison, dean of the Schools of Social Work, Policy and Management at Florida International University, which has trained hundreds of DCF abuse investigators, called the exemption ``extraordinary.'' ''I would not have expected them to be exempt from reporting child abuse. None of the other agencies are,'' he said. ``Obviously, they should be held to the same standards as the rest of the community.'' [MORE]

Force used for minor offenses at Boot Camp
Carol Marbin Miller of The Miami Herald used juvenile justice records and found that force was used against teenage boys in spite of nonviolent behavior at a Florida sheriff's boot camp. "In only eight of the 180 instances documented since January 2003 were the teenagers described as hitting guards, fighting with other youths, threatening to escape or trying to harm themselves." In many of the cases, the guards used the tactics despite written orders by Department of Juvenile Justice chief Anthony Schembri, who in June 2004 banned the use of physical force except in extreme situations. Juvenile justice experts who reviewed the documents at The Miami Herald's request said the treatment of the youths was unjustifiable. [MORE]