Originally published in The Palm Beach Post on Saturday, April 21, 2007.  By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN Palm Beach Post Staff Writer A Palm Beach County child abuse investigator lost his job this week after a mother he was supposed to be helping said he asked her for a private lap dance. Former Department of Children and [...]

Decades before Florida began inviting private companies to run prisons for teens, legendary businessman Jack Eckerd opened a different kind of program in the woods of Central Florida. With names such as E-Nini-Hassee that evoked the idyllic summer camps of the era, teens in the programs still gather around campfires, build their own rustic shelters [...]

Since the 1990s, Florida has repeatedly given juvenile justice contracts to for-profit corporations, saying the companies can do a better job and save the state money. But after years of lean funding from the legislature, for-profit juvenile justice programs aren’t doing a better job than the state, according to 2006 state data.