St. Johns County outpacing nearby counties in issuing civil citations for juveniles

A recent study that gave Florida an overall grade of F when it comes to using arrest alternatives for certain juveniles, found St. Johns County is far outpacing neighboring counties and most others throughout the state.

The report from the Tampa Bay-based nonprofit think tank The Caruthers Institute found only 53 percent of juveniles statewide are being issued civil citations for eligible offenses instead of being arrested and facing charges.

That puts Florida below the 59 percent threshold for the F grade.

Fifty of the state's 67 counties also received F's, according to the report sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, Southern Poverty Law Center, and a variety of other civic and social justice-minded organizations.

Only two counties received A's (Pinellas and Miami-Dade) for issuing citations at a rate of 90 percent or higher in 2016. One county was given a B grade for scoring 80 percent or higher, and six and eight were given C's and D's respectively.

St. Johns County issued citations at a rate of 77 percent last year, earning it a C.

Duval, Clay, Putnam and Flagler counties all received an F.

St. Johns County Sheriff's Office spokesman Cmdr. Chuck Mulligan and Lt. Mike Strausbaugh, with the sheriff's office community affairs bureau, told The Record on Wednesday their agency is proud of the work they do with keeping eligible youth out of the criminal justice system and discussed a few of the reasons why they might have just missed the B-threshold.

The biggest, they said, is arrests connected to domestic violence incidents.

"Currently, we don't offer civil citations for domestic violence circumstances," Strausbaugh said. "It's a serious offense to us."

While misdemeanor battery charges stemming from a domestic incident are, by statute, eligible for the citation, Strausbaugh and Mulligan said deputies on patrol have to be cautious when handling such a situation.

They offered the hypothetical of a teenager getting in a fight with his mom and shoving past her to leave a room. While few would want to see the teen arrested for misdemeanor battery under such a circumstance, sheriff's office deputies err on the side of caution in order to prevent the situation from escalating and someone getting seriously hurt once they leave the home.

The Caruthers Institute used data from what is called the Department of Juvenile Justice "dashboard" for their report.

The numbers there confirm what Strausbaugh and Mulligan claim. The data indicate the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office encountered 24 citation-eligible youth (first time offenders with no history of civil citations) on domestic violence calls in 2016 and made an arrest in each case. And those 24 (there is no data for July, May and April) represent over 40 percent of the 56 arrests of eligible youth in that year.

The other arrests are typically made for a variety of reasons, Strausbaugh said.

Incidents are broken down in a variety of ways in the dashboard. One way is by drawing a distinction between "school based" and "community based" incidents.

"Community based are considered those given by our patrol folks," Strausbaugh said.

The school based incidents originate in the schools and are handled, in St. Johns County, by the sheriff's office youth resource deputies.

Strausbaugh, who, along with his other duties, serves as the sheriff's office liaison with the school district, said school based arrests are pretty rare.

Sitting at his desk Wednesday, he had numbers from the DJJ dashboard for the most recent 12 months (September 2016 through August 2017) available up on his computer screen.

In incidents with 93 eligible youth, the youth resource deputies arrested only six.

Those arrests sometimes happen in fights where the severity of the injuries inflicted warrant an arrest, Strausbaugh said, or sometimes the student, or parent of the student, deemed the victim wants criminal charges.

"Now we are in the conundrum of do we honor the victims' parents' wishes," he said.

The same holds true for deputies on patrol who often have to decide, sometimes very quickly, whether the matter will lead to criminal charges or a citation.

"It's all about the balance of the circumstances involved," Mulligan said.

But the sheriff's office also has a "fail safe" built in to make sure eligible youth aren't getting diverted into the criminal side of the system, Strausbaugh explained.

Each criminal charge for a juvenile gets reviewed by a designated deputy to see if he or she was eligible for a citation instead. If they were, that deputy checks in with the responding deputy to ask about the situation and why a citation wasn't issued. This prevents what Strausbaugh and Mulligan call "missed opportunities."

And that's important because as they, and the Caruthers report point out, citations keep juveniles out of the criminal justice system. And that, the report says, increases public safety by reducing recidivism and improves opportunities for youth by not having life goals hampered by an arrest.

"It just saves money too," Strausbaugh said.

And the report agrees.

"Arrests are more expensive than civil citations and divert scarce public safety resources from addressing more severe offenses," it says.

And despite the county's average grade of C, it still ranks fairly high when compared to other counties.

In a detailed county page within the report, St. Johns County ranks fourth among the 35 counties with 100 or more eligible youth. The school district, which is policed by the youth resource deputies, ranks second in citation usage among the 18 districts with 31 to 99 eligible youth for the period of the study.

And that is all the result of a coordinated effort, according to Strausbaugh.

"I think this agency has always been at the cutting edge of taking care of our future and that is our youth," he said.