Opinion: A better plan for young offenders

Florida recently opened its first prison for inmates under 18 who normally would have been housed with adult prisoners. The facility for young offenders who have been tried and sentenced as adults is run not by the Department of Juvenile Justice but by the Department of Corrections. The reconfigured 38-bed dorm is housed in a separate wing of the Marion Correctional Institute.

Corrections officials nationwide are looking for new strategies for housing and treating young prisoners as states charge and sentence more adolescents as adults. Teenage inmates in adult prisons are especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation and physical assault. Studies also show that teenagers in adult prisons and jails have higher rates of recidivism than their counterparts who graduate from juvenile justice programs.

By segregating inmates under age 24 and providing them services with a special emphasis on basic and vocational education, Florida's youthful offender program addressed some of these issues, but not every juvenile sentenced as an adult was eligible. Expanding the admission criteria to include teens with longer sentences will accommodate convicts such as Nathaniel Brazill, 14, who will likely serve the first years of his 28-year sentence in a youthful offender program.

The new adolescent dorm will offer many of the same services, such as special education and anger management classes, available to youthful offenders. Authorities' plan to impart survival skills for getting along in the adult population shows foresight as well. The further the department moves away from one-size-fits-all incarceration schemes, the more Floridians will get for their corrections dollar. And department officials need new strategies; their own statistics show that 60 percent of inmates younger than 18 released from DOC programs return within five years.

The separation policy gives corrections a new tool for dealing with young criminals. It is a humane response that strikes a better balance between adult-sized punishment and the adolescent potential for change.

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