Five years ago in Orlando, Florida, a 6-year-old Black girl named Kaia Rolle was arrested after throwing a tantrum in class. The viral video of her being escorted out of her school and into a police car, despite her tearful pleas for a second chance, illustrates Florida鈥檚 well-developed school-to-prison pipeline 鈥� policies and practices that disproportionately funnel Black children into the state鈥檚 legal system. Even with the eventual passage of the Kaia Rolle Act in 2020, setting a minimum age for arrests, children as young as 7 can still be arrested and prosecuted in Florida.
In our report, Only Young Once: The Systemic Harm of Florida鈥檚 School-to-Prison Pipeline and Youth Legal System, the Southern Poverty Law Center explores the scope and impact of youth incarceration and ways Florida can reform and disrupt these systems.
Florida鈥檚 investment in youth discipline has produced a system that disproportionately pushes Black children out of schools and into carceral facilities shown to be incredibly dangerous for children, and does so at a great expense to taxpayers.
鈥淎ll children deserve their childhood. However, Kaia Rolle was robbed of hers when she was arrested as a 6-year-old first grader. The same traumatic experience can still happen to any 7-year-old in Florida today,鈥� said Delvin Davis, 蜜桃传媒 senior policy analyst and report鈥檚 author. 鈥淔lorida should put greater investment in child development, rehabilitation, and education rather than child incarceration.鈥�
Read the report
Click on image to download.
Other reports
This is the fourth report in a series about youth incarceration across the Deep South.
- Alabama: Only Young Once: Alabama鈥檚 Overreliance on School Pushout and For-Profit Youth Incarceration
- Louisiana: Only Young Once: The Urgent Need for Reform of Louisiana鈥檚 Youth Justice System
- Mississippi: Only Young Once: The Case for Mississippi鈥檚 Investment in Youth Decarceration
Illustration at top by Marcus Kwame Anderson
