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Young & Arrested

Signs with positive words such as "faith," "resilience," and "vivacious" are on the walls of the Orange County Juvenile Assessment Center. Photo: Joey Roulette.
The Orange County Juvenile Assessment Center is where kids are brought after being stopped by police. The building is located in Parramore, once a hub for juvenile arrests. Photo: Joey Roulette.
The Orange County Juvenile Assessment Center is where kids are brought after being stopped by police. The building is located in Parramore, once a hub for juvenile arrests.  Photo: Joey Roulette.
Case managers, probation officers, private security officers and private community providers are houses in Orange County’s Juvenile Assessment Center. Photo: Joey Roulette.
Case managers, probation officers, private security officers and private community providers are houses in Orange County’s Juvenile Assessment Center. Photo: Joey Roulette.
Livenson Loriston is program manager for a community provider that partners with Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice. Photo: Joey Roulette.
Some kids are taken from the juvenile system into the adult criminal system to be tried for cases. Florida once had a high direct file rate compared to other states. Photo: Renata Sago, WMFE.
Some kids are taken from the juvenile system into the adult criminal system to be tried for cases. Florida once had a high direct file rate compared to other states. Photo: Renata Sago, WMFE.
Christina Daly is secretary of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, which began a revamp of its system in 2011. Photo: Joey Roulette.
Christina Daly is secretary of Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice. The agency began a revamp in 2011 of how it handles kids who have been arrested. Photo: Joey Roulette.
Katherine Puzone, who heads the juvenile defense clinic at Barry University School of Law, says the system places the “middle class judgments of white people” on kids. Photo: Joey Roulette.
Katherine Puzone, who heads the juvenile defense clinic at Barry University School of Law, says the system places the “middle class judgments of white people” on kids. Photo: Joey Roulette.
Jaylon Cobb, now 20 years old, has trained at the Cordon Bleu. By fourteen, he had dropped out of school and was in a gang in a tough part of Apopka. Photo: Renata Sago, WMFE.
Jaylon Cobb, now 20 years old, has trained at the Cordon Bleu. By fourteen, he had dropped out of school and was in a gang in a tough part of Apopka. Photo: Renata Sago, WMFE.

About this project

Orange County leads the state in juvenile arrests according to data from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.
The majority of those arrests are felonies charged to black boys. In this five-part series, 90.7 WMFE reporter Renata Sago documents Orange County’s complex system for handling kids who commit crimes. The stories are told through the lens of three black men who were charged with felonies as children.

 

Central Florida leads the rest of the state in juvenile arrests. Photo: St. Edwards University.

In Prison By Sixteen

Orange County has the highest number of juvenile arrests in Florida. Black boys make up the majority of those arrests for crimes charged as felonies. In the first installment of Young & Arrested, 90.7’s Renata Sago takes us to Orlando’s Pine Hills neighborhood, a mixed-income black neighborhood with the state’s highest volume of arrests. It is where one young man landed in prison before he could graduate high school.
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Sent Away To Residential Confinement

Orange County has the highest number of juvenile arrests in Florida. Black boys make up the majority of those arrests for crimes charged as felonies. In this second installment of Young & Arrested, 90.7’s Renata Sago takes us out of Pine Hills into a tough part of Apopka. It’s where one kid’s mistakes landed him in residential confinement hours away from home.
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A young man attends his hearing at the Thomas S. Kirk Center for Juvenile Justice in Orlando. Photo: Renata Sago.

From a Classroom to a Courtroom

Orange County has the highest number of juvenile arrests in Florida, and black boys make up the majority of those arrests for crimes charged as felonies. In this third installment of Young & Arrested, one kid breaks a school rule that leads him to facing a felony.
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Parramore was once a hub for juvenile arrests in Orange County, but now delinquency has heightened in other areas. Photo: Joey Roulette.

High Risk, High Need, High Potential

Orange County has the highest number of juvenile arrests in Florida, and black boys make up the majority of those arrests for crimes charged as felonies. In this fourth installment of Young & Arrested, we look into how the community is changing its approach to how to treat kids who commit crimes.
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A Quick Explainer: What to Take Away from Orange County’s Juvenile Arrest Rate

Orange County has the highest number of juvenile arrests in Florida, and black boys make up the majority of those arrests for crimes charged as felonies. As part of the final installment of Young & Arrested, 90.7’s Renata Sago discusses what is next for juvenile justice in Orange County and what we can take away from the voices in the series.
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Photo: Andrew Scott Bolsinger.

Arrested Again: Juvenile Recidivism in Orange County

What happens when kids who enter Orange County's criminal system are released? A small percentage of them re-enter the system. As a follow up to her five-part series, Young & Arrested, 90.7's Renata Sago wrote a column in the Orlando Sentinel about the perils of juvenile recidivism.
READ THE FULL STORY »

Credits:

  • Reporting – Renata Sago, WMFE
  • Photography – Joey Roulette and Renata Sago, WMFE
  • Radio editing and production – Catherine Welch, WMFE and Renata Sago, WMFE
  • Digital editing and production – Renata Sago, WMFE
  • Web engineering and design – Ryan Ellison, WMFE
  • Social media – Jenny Babcock, WMFE
  • Technical support – Mac Dula, WMFE

 

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