Public wants young offenders tried in juvenile courts despite policymakers' get-tough stance

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- The juvenile justice system emerged a century ago out of the belief that young offenders were less culpable and more salvageable than their adult counterparts, but today, that system is under attack by get-tough policymakers claiming wide public support that Florida State University criminologists say simply doesn’t exist.

In fact, a rigorous study by those FSU researchers snapped a very different picture of public opinion on calls to abolish the juvenile justice system: More than 80 percent of the representative sample of 1,308 Florida adults surveyed were against such a move, nearly 40 percent strongly so. Throughout the nation’s fourth-largest state, that point of view prevailed even across demographic lines such as age, race, ethnicity, education, income or political and religious affiliations.