What's wrong with the system?

The Palm Beach Post spent a year looking into Florida's programs for young offenders. Here's what we found:

• At least 200 employees were hired despite being fired from previous juvenile justice jobs for everything from violence against teens to allegations of sexual misconduct.
• More than 100 active workers have felony arrest records.
• Guards at juvenile facilities have broken the arms of girls, busted the lips of teenage boys and punched, kicked, choked and body-slammed the kids in their care.
• Annual staff turnover rates top 60 percent at private residential programs. The typical youth care worker at those programs lasts less than eight months.
• Private contractors routinely violate the state's public records law.
• By the time state officials investigate an employee's misconduct, he sometimes already is working elsewhere in the system with kids again.

How we did it

Post reporters gathered records from the state and its private juvenile justice contractors, building a database of more than 17,000 current and former employees. The data allowed The Post to identify workers who were fired from one center and went on to work at another.

The information was compared with a Department of Corrections database of felons, and detailed information on each criminal case was obtained from courthouses across the state.

The Post used employment dates to compare length of employment and rates of turnover at programs run by the state and its contractors.

Copyright 2004 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
December 5, 2004 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. 14A