Dec
8
Irked legislator to grill officials on juvenile woes
Filed Under juvenile justice, privatization | Comments Off
By WILLIAM M. HARTNETT and KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writers
A key lawmaker says he will have hearings next month to ask state officials why they have failed to prevent violent and incompetent people from working in Florida’s programs for teen offenders.
Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami, said he was shocked by a Palm Beach Post investigation that revealed more than 200 workers were hired at juvenile justice centers in recent years despite being fired from similar jobs for attacking, abusing or neglecting teens in their care.
“People who hurt children have no business being in a position where they can do it again,” said Barreiro, who has considerable influence over the state’s Department of Juvenile Justice as chairman of the House Justice Appropriations Committee.
The Post found that many of the fired-and-rehired employees were able to work with teens again because the taxpayer-funded private companies that run most of Florida’s juvenile centers refuse to share critical personnel information with one another.
The state has enabled such secrecy by failing to enforce Florida’s public records law, which requires the juvenile agency and its contractors to exchange information such as job applications, disciplinary records and letters of termination.
“Not having the ability to look at somebody’s personnel file is setting you up for a huge failure,” Barreiro said. “And you’re putting kids in danger.”
The state must add bite to its toothless enforcement of the records law and force its contractors to share personnel information, Barreiro said.
“If they need some statutory language in order to mandate that, then they are going to get it,” he said.
State Sen. Ron Klein, D-Delray Beach, echoed many of Barreiro’s concerns. Klein said he would seek a meeting next week with the state’s top juvenile justice officials to find out what they are doing about issues raised in The Post’s investigation. Klein said he would push the Senate Criminal Justice Committee to have its own hearings if their answers are not to his satisfaction.
“If these private organizations are bringing in people with low-quality records, we’re obviously not getting good, quality service,” Klein said. “I want to know why the Department of Juvenile Justice isn’t jumping all over that, terminating contracts.”
State Rep. Mitch Needelman, a Brevard County Republican and vice chairman of the House Juvenile Justice Committee, said many of the problems The Post uncovered resulted from the deeply entrenched culture of secrecy that once permeated the Department of Juvenile Justice.
Needelman said he is optimistic, however, that the new administrators who took over the troubled agency this summer will deliver on their promises to rebuild the state’s juvenile justice system. Given such bold promises, “this is the perfect time to be talking about” hiring problems The Post uncovered, Needelman said.
Several legislators joined juvenile justice advocates in calling on the state to compile information on all current and former juvenile justice workers and their job histories, as The Post did during its investigation.
The state and its contractors have no way of telling whether someone applying for a juvenile justice job has been fired from a similar position.
“The most expedient way (to fix the system’s hiring problems) is to create a centralized personnel database that all employers have access to for inquiries and background checks,” said Roy Miller, president of the Children’s Campaign Inc.
Mark Fontaine, who represents private providers as head of the Florida Juvenile Justice Association, said the state also needs to do a better job explaining the public records law to its contractors.
“There have been numerous memos, seminars and other communications with providers concerning the public records law,” Tom Denham, spokesman for the Department of Juvenile Justice wrote in a statement to The Post.
“The secretary does not feel that a manual is necessary.”
Copyright 2004 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
December 8, 2004 Wednesday
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