The Florida Supreme Court confirmed this week what experts and parents have long known: Children are fundamentally different from adults. Recognizing this fact is critically important in Florida, a state where more than 10,000 children have been prosecuted as adults in the last five years without a judge’s input.
As managing attorney in the SPLC’s Mississippi office, Jody Owens has seen firsthand the devastation wrought by the “school-to-prison pipeline” that funnels vulnerable children into the harsh world of police, courts and prison cells. He explains this civil rights crisis and the path to reform.
In a commentary published in today’s Tampa Tribune, the head of the SPLC’s Florida office argues in favor of pending legislation that would greatly reduce the number of the state’s children pushed into adult courts, a category in which Florida leads the nation.
The SPLC is supporting legislative efforts to rein in the power of Florida prosecutors to push children into adult courts and prisons without judicial oversight.
The class action suit claims that police in a predominantly African-American school district used unconstitutional, excessive force on students, some of them already restrained, by deploying chemical spray on about 300 students over a five-year period.
Today the Louisiana Department of Education, the Orleans Parish School Board, and a class of children represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law reached a settlement on a lawsuit that was filed over four years ago
The SPLC has reached a settlement with state and local education officials to help New Orleans children with disabilities.
Teens in Florida respond to an SPLC writing contest with powerful words about why children should not be prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system.
A Florida pre-kindergarten program will take steps to ensure it does not discriminate against children with diabetes as part of a settlement agreement to resolve a federal lawsuit the SPLC filed on behalf of a 3-year-old girl.
After notifying more than half of New Orleans public schools that their enrollment and registration practices discriminate against children because of their immigration status or that of their parents, the SPLC reported today that the majority of the city’s schools now have enrollment forms that comply with federal law.
